If she can feed perfectly well with her clothes on, what's the purpose of the sex?

[cupiscent]

Since we'd had a big old pause on The Wire anyway, and it's been high summer and therefore stupidity time, we mainlined Lost Girl.

Which was a good idea, because I'm honestly not sure that's something you want to savour.


Things that really pissed us off:

• Inconsistency of powers: Now, this never reached Supernatural levels of blatant WTFery (you know, where they outline the scope of the monster-of-the-week and then it behaves totally counter to everything) and you could often squint and handwave, but there was still a ridiculous level of variation to what Bo could and couldn't do from scenario to scenario. In one episode, she's voodooing through clothes (the blonde chippie in the Fury episode) and then much, much later she seems helpless without access to bare skin (I'm thinking specifically when she's rubbing herself all over Vex).
  
  Though really, this is just a subset of something that always gives us the ripe irrits about media, and that's the "dramatic tableaux that's really just a metaphor" style of scene presentation. It's most clearly seen in completely unrealistic fight scenes, for instance where the villain has the hero in a chokehold for a whole minute while they deliver some pointed dialogue, and then without any discernible change in circumstances not to mention while having significantly less strength than he would've had before being choked for a minute, the hero breaks the hold and gets the upper hand! What this scene really means is "It's too difficult/expensive to show you something realistic, so take this as a sort of ballet on the lines of achieving the outcome we tell you".
  
  So Bo's powers are directly related to what story outcomes the writers want. OK, sure. I can live with that, just don't expect me to like it, you lazy bastards.
  
• Inexplicable ninja: For starters, her first recourse is waaaaay too often violence, when it should be sex, that's her nature. And since that is - or should be - her nature, where the hell did the immense proficiency with combat come from anyway? Now, it makes sense that Bo would be more kick-ass than the average human, but where does her fae-beating come from? Especially since we never see her doing any sort of training that isn't utterly weak and heavily bracketed by eating, drinking and lolling about on the couch. I'm not saying I don't dig the lifestyle, I'm just saying I bet the sworn mercenaries and assassins of the fae world - you know, the ones she holds off and dispatches like they were redshirts - don't have a training regime that's one part airy-fairy sword katas and four parts hedonism.
  
• Do I even need to mention how obnoxiously thick she is? How disinterested in the world? How completely, appallingly ignorant and unwilling to change that? I mean, she just about wets herself at finding another succubus, but she's never gone looking for a) information on, b) history of, c) registers listing succubi. A book is a major plotpoint, but they still have to practically beat her over the head with it to get her to read it, and then she skips all the bits that don't have pretty pictures. I appreciate that reading isn't for everyone, but when one of the supposed driving motivations for a character is a desperation to learn about certain things, having them wilfully ignoring available information is GODDAMN RIDICULOUS.

Things that mildly bother us:

• Maybe they're saving it for a later power-upgrade, but I'm really sad that the succubi couldn't dream-walk. That's definitive. One of the most irritating things about the removal of this and the addition of kung-fu is that I have this awful feeling that really, they just wanted a vampire without the whole done-to-death name and with more sex.
  
• Ugh, she's so clingy. Always winding her arms around Dyson's neck and twining her fingers in her hair like... well, like they're teenagers and she's about to call him baby names. Now look, sure, I'm really not one for PDAs. But I've had couple-friends who really really were, and even they weren't that revoltingly cutesy. I get that this is Baby's First Real Romance, given the whole deaddeaddead thing, but SERIOUSLY OMG STOPPIT.
  
• The fact that they have a major character running around with fishnet shirts and corsetry and eyeliner and deadblack hair... and then they just completely denigrate the goth scene. Yeah, fuck you too, you can give us our damn aesthetic back if you're going to be like that.
  
• The power of names! Seriously, all you need to know is what type of fae someone is, and you can own them. Which was flagged by Dyson when he told Bo off for being nosy about what he was, but seems to be ignored by everyone who introduces themselves (or someone else) to Bo with what they are.("Hi, I'm a will-o-the-wisp", "my wife is a fury", "my partner the siren".)
  
• Speaking of Dyson... so if all fae feed off humans somehow, how does he feed? Hey? Mr Wolf? AHEM? (Now that I've opened this can of worms, I'm curious about Hale too, because lifting straight from your traditional mythology, it stands to reason that he would feed on the "doom" of humans, which... well, hey, I'm just filled with joy, aren't you?)
  
• How powerful Vex is. No, seriously. He can do anything he likes to anyone he likes. Except maybe Dyson, sometimes. I can only assume he's not ruling the universe because it would take away from the quality time he can spend styling his hair.

Things that, on the whole, we really liked:

• Trick.

No, really, that was about it. Even Kenzi - who I list under "major redeeming feature" - was not without her highly irritating moments (and the Male accurately pointed out that in terms of exclamations of pithy hilarity, saintsomeone has a higher strike rate and isn't involved in such ludicrous plots). I started out likening Kenzi to Dean Winchester, and it holds true: she provides some merit to balance out the show while you're watching, but she isn't a reason to watch all by herself.

Is Trick? No. Because the show is tragically light on his actual story. (Or maybe not tragically, because if they'd focused on it, they'd probably have bollocksed it up.) But what they gave of his story was excellent, and the character was magnificent, and he was sensible (!!) and his choices actually made sense holy shit what madness is this?

I've kind of really lost steam on this grand summary and response. I'm not burning with ire (despite what it might appear from the list above) nor am I (obviously) thrilled to little pieces. I must say I feel no huge need to tune in for a second series, but neither am I warning everyone away from this with a big stick. It's a really interesting world, and it's lovely seeing some (nominally) non-vampire urban fantasy on the screen. It has some really interesting moments and the occasional good episode. (...ok, only one leaps to mind, the "Paranoid Android Spider" one.) Kenzi says fun things and Trick is interesting. There's quite a lot of sex, but it doesn't really mean anything (see post title) so frankly it kinda bored me, but at least that time provided opportunities for us to have lengthy discussions on various points without having to pause.

In short: silly. But with good points, especially if you're into urban fantasy. Which we are. And if we didn't watch silly things, we'd never turn the television on, would we?