omg this frank sinatra from the vaults album is KILLING ME WITH BEAUTY
HI LJ!!!!! I know I haven't been around much, and I apologize without explanation because this is a public post and because the explanation is really boring (basically: I have been busy). But my nice, leisurely spring break is almost over and this felt like the time to dump a mountain of thoughts on bad television writing to you. So.
30 rock
HAZEL IS KILLING ME, Y'ALL. It is a slow, painful, life-being-seeped out of me kind of death.
When I caught up with 30 Rock in... idk, I think October?? after having tapered off somewhere in season 4, I could not understand my past self's choices. LOOK AT WHAT I HAD BEEN MISSING!!!! EVERY EPISODE WAS A GIFT!!! It was one of those why-do-I-have-to-do-things-I-could-be-home-watching-30-Rock-right-now-dammit marathons, aka the best kind (...and the worst kind). It was all so specifically calibrated to my (terrible) sense of humor that even though I had this vague recollection of getting kind of "bleh" about the Julianne Moore subplot and missing a couple of episodes and never really finding the energy to catch up... I couldn't fathom how I had ever gotten lazy about it.
AND THEN THERE WAS HAZEL!!!
Here is the thing: 30 Rock is insane. It's like the writing staff locks themselves in a room every week and comes up with the weirdest-ass satirical asides they possibly could, and then divides them up among the characters according to category -- the political/rich white guy commentary goes to Jack, self-involved, celebrity-culture-mocking quips to Jenna, deep-south Christian-right stuff to Kenneth. Liz, Frank, Pete, and Cerie are all a bit less likely to get direct social commentary, but the humor given to them all tends to revolve around the specific axis of that character. There is even some method to Tracy Jordan's madness, I think, although I don't know if it is a thing I could explain in words. Anyway the problem with Hazel is that she says absurd things, like the rest of them, but they don't... fit into a box of Hazel. It's like she gets all the weird reject lines that are technically kind of funny but didn't fit into anyone else's pile so... give it to the new girl!! Like on last night's episode, "I've seen people killed by shoes before but never like that!" and "Ugh, like I need another curse! I'm too busty!" and then the "Take a picture, it'll last longer! [hands out picture]"??? WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO GET FROM ANY OF THAT?? Girl who's been in a ~bad scene~?? Girl who thinks she's super hot but isn't??? Are those really things that are even funny enough to bring up?? And that's just the dialogue -- in the handful of episodes she's been we've learned she is a stalker who wants to be famous who used to be fat who wants to be Liz Lemon's best friend enough to sabotage Jenna but then tell her about it, who is too dumb to manage Tracy and Jenna by herself but doesn't want interference on that front and I just............... THERE IS TOO MUCH GOING ON AND NONE OF IT IS FUNNY AND NONE OF IT FITS TOGETHER AND ALSO APPARENTLY I FIND KRISTIN SCHAAL'S ACTING GRATING, and even though everything else about this show is literally kind of perfect to me (last week's episode about the construction of an Avery tv movie was magnificent) I don't know if I can take it anymore.
so now the question is: did Julianne Moore's character annoy me this much??? I don't think so but I am nonetheless so much closer to understanding my past self's actions. Plus maybe I have a magic curse and if I stop watching she'll go away in two episodes!!
smash
I do not even know what to write -- I just -- what are they doing?? Do they even know what they are doing? How are the people writing this show the same people who wrote the pilot (which was very solid!)?? Every week I'm more convinced it's unsalvageable, which makes me want to know why it got renewed, since it isn't even getting the ratings NBC was hoping for, is it?? Okay but seriously, specifically:
- I know this show is a response to Glee, in whatever way, and part of Glee's success relates back to their covers of pop songs, but SMASH'S COVERS ARE THE WORST. Every single one has been terribly/awkwardly integrated!! THE BAR MITZVAH THING??? KARAOKE?? That super weird thing with Ivy in her bedroom?? Some of them actively work against the the writing -- like the episode when the other chorus members are teaching Karen how to blend, and then she turns and takes center stage during their little "Rumor Has It" cover? And everyone is still grinning?? The thing is: the musical-related musical numbers are fantastic. Every single one of them has been fab. I know they've got a great songwriting team on board for that, and it shows. SO WHY ARE WE EVEN BOTHERING WITH THE COVERS, since it's obvious no one knows how to write them into the damn show argh
- the rivalry is stupid, the affair plot is stupid, and both of them are making me dislike everyone involved?? Karen is SO bland and naive to a fault, and Ivy is whiny and paranoid!! I get that they're trying to set them up as the two sides of the Marilyn coin, but I CANNOT BRING MYSELF TO SYMPATHIZE WITH EITHER ONE OF THEM. As for the affair -- I... kind of like affair plotlines, a lot of the time, tbh?? Especially early in a show when you haven't had time to attach yourself to the marriage(s) jeopardized by them, because they're the worst when they're just being used to "shake things up" but the best when they're allowed to be... what they are. But this one is repetitive, confusing (WHAT IS IT ABOUT EACH OTHER THEY FIND SO IRRESISTIBLE, why is he so active in his pursuit of her, what... even), and worst of all, boring.
- But on that note, is there a single character who is actually particularly likeable/interesting? (Well, idk, I kind of like Tom. And I am inclined to like Debra Messing's character because I love Debra Messing, even though they have given me no reason to like her, and the director and Anjelica Huston are like... fine. SO IT COULD BE WORSE. But not much worse.) It's like they don't know how to write people. This week's plotline with the daughter -- she was so virtuous! It was so boring!! WHO CARES, NOT ME!!
Ugh all I want from life is a musical television show that is worth watching and I have been given two beautiful pilots and then nothing worthwhile ever again, why are you doing this to me universe
pan am
I am so tired of shows that can't write relationships. IT EXHAUSTS ME. This show was dumb and fun and then Dean and Colette got together and everything was the worst. I'm kind of getting a rage blackout thinking back to the episode with the barn -- there was this brief moment in the middle of it (when Colette, responding to his parents' TOTALLY LEGITIMATE questions about the serious relationship he'd been in with another woman a breath earlier, said, "maybe this was stupid, maybe we should forget about it") that was more emotionally interesting than anything Dean/Colette ever offered before or after, but then they dismissed that with mushy nonsense and ended that subplot with BANGING IN A BARN!!!!! AND THEN HE SLEPT WITH BRIDGET FOR NO REASON AND IT......... I just... hate when you can physically FEEL the writers trying to peel two characters apart for ~tension~ reasons!! It's so artificial and glaring and I DIDN'T EVEN EVER REALLY CARE IF DEAN AND COLETTE WERE TOGETHER
I was going to talk about how dumb the Ashley Green(e?)/Ted/Laura triangle was too but I am le tired after that brief paragraph about Dean/Colette, plus like, let's be real, this show is never going to be on again so what does it matter, JUST KNOW THAT THAT WAS STUPID AND IRRITATING TOO, and that I am offended that bad romance made my stupid show about people wearing pretty clothes pretty much unwatchable after the Christmas hiatus, blerg.
enterprise
This is basically just an (expanded version of an) email I sent to goldenmelisande in an effort to prevent myself from posting all of this to lj, BUT IT TURNS OUT I WANT IT IN MY JOURNAL, so there, whatever, I do what I want!!! AND WHAT I WANT TO DO IS BE AN EMBARRASSMENT, ALL THE TIME.
I watched the pilot of Enterprise way back when it aired (in 2001!! 2002? Something like that) but got bored really quickly because it sucked and I had the attention span of a 12-year-old (since I was a 12-year-old). I think I must've kept a pretty close eye on it over the internet or something, because even though I stopped watching after 1x08, I still somehow knew to come back and start watching again when Trip/T'Pol became a thing (like bb me had wanted it to), and all the "random" episodes between the beginning and the Trip/T'Pol that I've seen are either Hoshi episodes or episodes involving Voyager alumni, so. Uh.
SO IDK I decided to watch all the stuff I missed (...and by "all" I mean "I started every episode but I only watched about 40% of them all the way through) in seasons 1/2/the unsexy parts of s3.
ANYWAY NOT TO GET ALL SENTIMENTAL-TREKKIE ON ALL OF YOU, but even though I really (really!) loved the '10 movie, it still kind of makes me sad that "new" Trek is a reboot of the 60s series?? Maybe it's that I have never cared about TOS, but it's also just that like -- it was so obviously, transparently created for the 60s. People forget that putting a russian man in a trusted position on the bridge was kind of as big a deal as giving a black woman a role besides maid? Because the crew of TOS was specifically formulated to send a progresive message to the people of the 60s! The crew of every newer ST series was meant to send a progressive message too -- but a newer one. So it's kind of weird that we're going back to the old characters, because they don't mean the same things now?? I don't know.
(Every new Star Trek but Enterprise, btw -- in a lot of ways Enterprise is TOS, if Spock were a girl in a catsuit and McCoy were an engineer?? It's a lot less ensemble-y than the other modern Star Treks, the same as TOS (but not AOS, actually, I don't think) in that it is ultra-focused on a "core trio", which is kind of irritating tbh -- it's like they thought since the other Star Treks were progressive they didn't have to take any specific steps towards that? There were a TON of rumors, before Enterprise came out, that it was going to have a gay character, since that was one of the few symbolic barriers Trek hadn't broken, but instead they go obnoxiously out of their way to make sure we know that everyone on the bridge crew is definitely heterosexual, which is especially dumb since Malcolm, Travis, and Hoshi all only do so much and only have so many lines, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN SO EASY to go there, buuuuuuuut no, Berman and Braga are dicks!!! SURPRISE.)
Idk I guess the point I'm very badly coming to is that there's a (large) part of me that really likes the premise of Enterprise?? Just like, the idea of going back to the very beginning, when all this alpha quadrant territory really WAS unexplored and having the Vulcans be condescending and weird and holding them back, and how everyone is a little closer to "our" time? They have movie nights and dogs and blue jeans, and the ship feels more like a submarine than a luxury liner. It's nice that Gene Roddenberry gave us a ~magic federation~ of peaceful species where everything is la-dee-da, but I think where Enterprise was going is way more interesting than seeing Khan again -- it was sort of on the road to showing us how that all came to be, I guess. (And it would have done it well!!! Because by the end Manny Coto was running the show and Manny Coto is kiiiiiiind of a genius.) (Catherine calls him Manicotti :3) The "Coalition" between Vulcans, Andorians, Tellarites and Earth was weird and complicated and politically unstable!! It was starting to make sense why humans held such a place of prominence in the Quadrant!! We were feeling less like the Mary Sue species of Star Trek by the minute!!!! THE ROMULAN WAR WAS COMING UP!
(crying why am I such a nerd, god, ANYWAY!)
THAT SAID, lol Berman and Braga thinking that somehow calling a show ENTERPRISE instead of STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE and a non-instrumental theme song and lots of naked people (SO MANY NAKED PEOPLE!!!!!!) would somehow make it a ~regular~ show that ~non-trekkies~ would want to watch, and also make it feel ~fresh and new~ bc so much of s1 feels EXACTLY like filler Voyager episodes. And like, one-off alien species stories worked on Voyager because when you're setting a show far away from "home", you can totally make a species with a random bump on their forehead that you never intend to use again and like, w/e, it's fine, but it feels weird when Enterprise does it... because theoretically we know the species that live in the Alpha Quadrant!! They're our neighbors!! Why do we never see these people again!!! Who the fuck even are they?!?!?!
That's another thing that's really good about s4 -- NO NEW ALIENS AT ALL. They somehow tell completely compelling stories with only Romulans, Klingons, Vulcans, Tellarites, and Andorians. As it should be!!! S1 and S2's best episodes are the ones with Alpha Q species too, I think -- their ferengi episode was actually enjoyable, the Vulcan/Andorian arc is pretty great ngl, AND THERE'S ONE WITH A KLINGON SHIP IN A GAS GIANT THAT I LOVED, although that was probably mostly because it was also about T'Pol, Malcolm, and Hoshi, and... those are three people that I love. They should have written those stories ALL THE TIME, because humanity's early encounters with those people is actually way more interesting than some dumb alien hunters we'll ever see again (THEY SO WISHED THEY COULD USE THE HIROGEN) hunting "wraith people" on a rogue planet.
The continuity (that is a ~big issue~ in the world of Star Trek) is way better than it is on Voyager though!!! LIKE, EVEN IN S1, MILES BETTER. People act like they were forced into doing the Xindi arc in s3, and they prob were sort of, but there are definitely small arcs going on in the early show and they're constantly referring back to "that time x happened" and it's like, ACTUAL EPISODES THAT HAPPENED THAT ARE RELEVANT TO THE PLOT!!! There's this whole thing at the end of s1 where they decide to go to risa and the two episodes before it start out all "we're going to Risa ....welp no we're not!" and then when they do get to Risa Archer's like "my crew's going to murder me if we don't go to Risa now..."
Too bad the big overarching plot of the early show is about ~the Suliban~ and ~the Kabal~ and ~the Temporal Cold War~ which sounds like it could be cool but NOPE, THE WORST. Also speaking of the arcs, it's weird how even though season 3 is ~THE ARC SEASON~, if you took out a couple of lines about the Xindi almost all the early episodes are exactly the same kind of dumb as season 1 and season 2 are.
Man, season 3. I'm starting to realize that I love how Trip/T'Pol came together, even though it's basically a contrivance for the sake of nakedness??? A lot of Trip/T'Pol fandom seems convinced that Trip and T'Pol had an ~immediate connection~ and they had a chance to end up romantically embroiled in each other no matter what, but to me their entire... romantic thing is so based in the weirdness of the Expanse, in the painfulness of losing a sister, in the awkward intimacy of HOW NAKED YOU HAVE TO BE TO DO NEUROPRESSURE, in the drug addiction. I am just... so obsessed with the idea of them just sitting there talking about their lives to each other during those session because I mean, Trip has to distract himself somehow when T'POL'S BOOBS ARE IN HIS FACE, (only Vulcans, god damn) and then the fact that they're half-naked becomes less and less weird?? Except it still kind of is sometimes because how could it not be. And it slowly sort of becomes most natural for Trip to spend his free time with her -- dinner in the mess hall and her showing up in engineering to lean over his shoulder because the ship is always broken, and she starts to tell him about ancient Vulcan poetry (WAY more interesting and violent than you'd think!) and the history of Vulcan's warp advances and it turns out she really likes human music and the human selection of tea (not that he's a tea person, that's more a Malcolm thing, but he likes that she likes human tea?) and then oh fuck he definitely kind of has feelings that are never going to get reciprocated why is this always his life she's a Vulcan that's even more unattainable than your usual, Tucker.
AND THEN T'POL, my precious little terrible Vulcan, who I think mostly likes being on a ship full of humans because Vulcans know, somehow, how bad she is at being a Vulcan, how close to the surface her emotions are, but humans don't. To them she's just like the rest of them -- arrogant, stuffy, emotionless. But the more she stays with them and gets to FEEL like she fits in back home, the less she actually does??? But in truth she's an outsider in both places. And that's all she's ever wanted, to belong somewhere, and she feels closer to it in these progressively intimate moments with Trip than she ever has anywhere, but she's still not quite there and it's awful, being that close to it but having it all still just -- just out of reach. What she does in "Harbinger" is my FAVORITE, ngl, because to him she is so completely not an option and he accepts that and tries to move on... and in her jealous fit, T'Pol makes herself an option, just the once, because she knows that's all she needs to do to regain his attention. UGH T'POL, MY PRECIOUS, DRUG-ADDLED BB, sometimes she is nuts but she is also just... the greatest!!! I LOVE HER MORE THAN ANYTHING. (People act like her withdrawal from Trip to study the Kir'Shara in s4 is contrived, too, but no!!! THAT WHOLE THING KIND OF KILLS ME, because it's like... that her mom died because she was a Syrannite, and her mom was a Syrannite because of T'Pol's inability to control her emotions. Of course she wants to withdraw into Vulcanness! Of course she doesn't want to turn to Trip, who has come to represent emotional release for her!! U G H season 4 is my everything).
Oh and in case anyone was wondering, Archer is still worse than intolerable. BUT ANYWAY I don't think that this list of ~episodes of Enterprise elapses thinks are worth watching~ will actually be helpful to anyone on my flist, but sometimes I like to pretend that like-minded strangers stumble across these things (...probably because I am constantly creeping around the internet spaces of somewhat-like-minded strangers), even though ten bucks says the only like-minded stranger who will end up here is a future version of me. (Hi, future Alex! Sorry about your Enterprise phase. I feel your pain.) But anyway!
1x03 Fight or Flight (Hoshi-centric!!!)
1x07 The Andorian Incident (VULCAN/ANDORIAN INTRIGUE)
1x08 Breaking the Ice (TRIP AND T'POL BEING YOUNG AND DUMB)
1x12 Silent Enemy (Adorable Malcolm + Hoshi subplot)
1x13 Dear Doctor (~glimpses of denobulan society~, idk if people who are not me would like this)
1x14 Sleeping Dogs (THE KLINGON ONE!!!!!!!)
1x16 Shuttlepod One (basically an entire episode of Trip and Malcolm being lame and cranky)
1x19 Acquisition (the best Ferengi episode of anything I have ever seen, not that that is hard)
1x23 Fallen Hero (I REALLY LIKE THE VULCAN LADY and there's a lot of T'Pol!!!!!)
2x02 Carbon Creek
2x09 Singularity
2x10 Vanishing Point (The reset-button ending is FOREVER OFFENSIVE but I honesty love the rest of the episode so much I still don't care!!! It should have been a two-parter where vanished Hoshi ACTUALLY had to save the ship from those aliens, argh.)
2x12 The Catwalk
2x20 Horizon (TRAVIS' ONLY REAL EPISODE!! Tbh I always thought the Boomer thing was fascinating so I'm glad this, at least, exists. Watch out for Archer hitting on T'Pol though, yuck.)
2x24 First Flight (goldenmelisande always says she hates the scene in the pilot where T'Pol meets Trip and Archer for the first time because there's like this whole... boys club vibe to it?? And on that note this episode, which I'm not sure I would have liked that much/at all without that comment swimming around in my head, fascinates me. Because it does paint a super boys-clubby picture of Starfleet in this era, and I... don't know if the show, even under Manny Coto, would have had the guts to explore a deconstruction of that atmosphere, but this episode made me think about that? Especially since when the Columbia gets launched in s4 the ENTIRE BRIDGE CREW is female, and if you think about it the female members of Archer's crew are the only ones he didn't really choose... T'Pol was assigned to him, Hoshi was unquestionably the best/most brilliant available, whereas all the others are bright, but not so bright that they would have been the only choice. IDK, I AM JUST SUPER FASCINATED BY THE IDEA OF A DE-MASCULINIZATION OF THE MILITARY, SORT OF???)
3x08 Twilight (this is an Archer episode with Archer/T'Pol undertones THAT I LIKE TO ARGUE AWAY but still they are there, and this is still on this list, so.)
3x09 North Star (literally "the Old West: in space!!!" but it works!)
3x10 Similitude
3x15 Harbinger (...I AM WHO I AM)
3x20 The Forgotten
3x21 E²
And literally all of season 4 except 4x01, 4x02, and 4x22 (THE WORST!!!)
But let's be real, the only Enterprise I ever going to watch now that I have finished this journey is the (newly updated!!!!) 4 hour avi file Catherine and I call "Trip/T'Pol: the Movie". (IF ANYONE EVER WANTS A COPY OF THAT, btw, you know where to find me).
IN CONCLUSION, this is the best "Shit Girls Say" parody ever made.
Idk, that is all. I woke up this morning to a COMPLETELY OUT OF THE BLUE defriending by someone I considered a really close friend (seriously! no email, no warning, no explanation, like, WHAT), so it feels kind of... weird? Posting here right now? But I've had a copy of this post sitting in semagic for awhile, waiting to be finished, and I guess I shouldn't let stuff like that stop me. Yeah no, april fool's!
30 rock
HAZEL IS KILLING ME, Y'ALL. It is a slow, painful, life-being-seeped out of me kind of death.
When I caught up with 30 Rock in... idk, I think October?? after having tapered off somewhere in season 4, I could not understand my past self's choices. LOOK AT WHAT I HAD BEEN MISSING!!!! EVERY EPISODE WAS A GIFT!!! It was one of those why-do-I-have-to-do-things-I-could-be-home-watching-30-Rock-right-now-dammit marathons, aka the best kind (...and the worst kind). It was all so specifically calibrated to my (terrible) sense of humor that even though I had this vague recollection of getting kind of "bleh" about the Julianne Moore subplot and missing a couple of episodes and never really finding the energy to catch up... I couldn't fathom how I had ever gotten lazy about it.
AND THEN THERE WAS HAZEL!!!
Here is the thing: 30 Rock is insane. It's like the writing staff locks themselves in a room every week and comes up with the weirdest-ass satirical asides they possibly could, and then divides them up among the characters according to category -- the political/rich white guy commentary goes to Jack, self-involved, celebrity-culture-mocking quips to Jenna, deep-south Christian-right stuff to Kenneth. Liz, Frank, Pete, and Cerie are all a bit less likely to get direct social commentary, but the humor given to them all tends to revolve around the specific axis of that character. There is even some method to Tracy Jordan's madness, I think, although I don't know if it is a thing I could explain in words. Anyway the problem with Hazel is that she says absurd things, like the rest of them, but they don't... fit into a box of Hazel. It's like she gets all the weird reject lines that are technically kind of funny but didn't fit into anyone else's pile so... give it to the new girl!! Like on last night's episode, "I've seen people killed by shoes before but never like that!" and "Ugh, like I need another curse! I'm too busty!" and then the "Take a picture, it'll last longer! [hands out picture]"??? WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO GET FROM ANY OF THAT?? Girl who's been in a ~bad scene~?? Girl who thinks she's super hot but isn't??? Are those really things that are even funny enough to bring up?? And that's just the dialogue -- in the handful of episodes she's been we've learned she is a stalker who wants to be famous who used to be fat who wants to be Liz Lemon's best friend enough to sabotage Jenna but then tell her about it, who is too dumb to manage Tracy and Jenna by herself but doesn't want interference on that front and I just............... THERE IS TOO MUCH GOING ON AND NONE OF IT IS FUNNY AND NONE OF IT FITS TOGETHER AND ALSO APPARENTLY I FIND KRISTIN SCHAAL'S ACTING GRATING, and even though everything else about this show is literally kind of perfect to me (last week's episode about the construction of an Avery tv movie was magnificent) I don't know if I can take it anymore.
so now the question is: did Julianne Moore's character annoy me this much??? I don't think so but I am nonetheless so much closer to understanding my past self's actions. Plus maybe I have a magic curse and if I stop watching she'll go away in two episodes!!
smash
I do not even know what to write -- I just -- what are they doing?? Do they even know what they are doing? How are the people writing this show the same people who wrote the pilot (which was very solid!)?? Every week I'm more convinced it's unsalvageable, which makes me want to know why it got renewed, since it isn't even getting the ratings NBC was hoping for, is it?? Okay but seriously, specifically:
- I know this show is a response to Glee, in whatever way, and part of Glee's success relates back to their covers of pop songs, but SMASH'S COVERS ARE THE WORST. Every single one has been terribly/awkwardly integrated!! THE BAR MITZVAH THING??? KARAOKE?? That super weird thing with Ivy in her bedroom?? Some of them actively work against the the writing -- like the episode when the other chorus members are teaching Karen how to blend, and then she turns and takes center stage during their little "Rumor Has It" cover? And everyone is still grinning?? The thing is: the musical-related musical numbers are fantastic. Every single one of them has been fab. I know they've got a great songwriting team on board for that, and it shows. SO WHY ARE WE EVEN BOTHERING WITH THE COVERS, since it's obvious no one knows how to write them into the damn show argh
- the rivalry is stupid, the affair plot is stupid, and both of them are making me dislike everyone involved?? Karen is SO bland and naive to a fault, and Ivy is whiny and paranoid!! I get that they're trying to set them up as the two sides of the Marilyn coin, but I CANNOT BRING MYSELF TO SYMPATHIZE WITH EITHER ONE OF THEM. As for the affair -- I... kind of like affair plotlines, a lot of the time, tbh?? Especially early in a show when you haven't had time to attach yourself to the marriage(s) jeopardized by them, because they're the worst when they're just being used to "shake things up" but the best when they're allowed to be... what they are. But this one is repetitive, confusing (WHAT IS IT ABOUT EACH OTHER THEY FIND SO IRRESISTIBLE, why is he so active in his pursuit of her, what... even), and worst of all, boring.
- But on that note, is there a single character who is actually particularly likeable/interesting? (Well, idk, I kind of like Tom. And I am inclined to like Debra Messing's character because I love Debra Messing, even though they have given me no reason to like her, and the director and Anjelica Huston are like... fine. SO IT COULD BE WORSE. But not much worse.) It's like they don't know how to write people. This week's plotline with the daughter -- she was so virtuous! It was so boring!! WHO CARES, NOT ME!!
Ugh all I want from life is a musical television show that is worth watching and I have been given two beautiful pilots and then nothing worthwhile ever again, why are you doing this to me universe
pan am
I am so tired of shows that can't write relationships. IT EXHAUSTS ME. This show was dumb and fun and then Dean and Colette got together and everything was the worst. I'm kind of getting a rage blackout thinking back to the episode with the barn -- there was this brief moment in the middle of it (when Colette, responding to his parents' TOTALLY LEGITIMATE questions about the serious relationship he'd been in with another woman a breath earlier, said, "maybe this was stupid, maybe we should forget about it") that was more emotionally interesting than anything Dean/Colette ever offered before or after, but then they dismissed that with mushy nonsense and ended that subplot with BANGING IN A BARN!!!!! AND THEN HE SLEPT WITH BRIDGET FOR NO REASON AND IT......... I just... hate when you can physically FEEL the writers trying to peel two characters apart for ~tension~ reasons!! It's so artificial and glaring and I DIDN'T EVEN EVER REALLY CARE IF DEAN AND COLETTE WERE TOGETHER
I was going to talk about how dumb the Ashley Green(e?)/Ted/Laura triangle was too but I am le tired after that brief paragraph about Dean/Colette, plus like, let's be real, this show is never going to be on again so what does it matter, JUST KNOW THAT THAT WAS STUPID AND IRRITATING TOO, and that I am offended that bad romance made my stupid show about people wearing pretty clothes pretty much unwatchable after the Christmas hiatus, blerg.
enterprise
This is basically just an (expanded version of an) email I sent to goldenmelisande in an effort to prevent myself from posting all of this to lj, BUT IT TURNS OUT I WANT IT IN MY JOURNAL, so there, whatever, I do what I want!!! AND WHAT I WANT TO DO IS BE AN EMBARRASSMENT, ALL THE TIME.
I watched the pilot of Enterprise way back when it aired (in 2001!! 2002? Something like that) but got bored really quickly because it sucked and I had the attention span of a 12-year-old (since I was a 12-year-old). I think I must've kept a pretty close eye on it over the internet or something, because even though I stopped watching after 1x08, I still somehow knew to come back and start watching again when Trip/T'Pol became a thing (like bb me had wanted it to), and all the "random" episodes between the beginning and the Trip/T'Pol that I've seen are either Hoshi episodes or episodes involving Voyager alumni, so. Uh.
SO IDK I decided to watch all the stuff I missed (...and by "all" I mean "I started every episode but I only watched about 40% of them all the way through) in seasons 1/2/the unsexy parts of s3.
ANYWAY NOT TO GET ALL SENTIMENTAL-TREKKIE ON ALL OF YOU, but even though I really (really!) loved the '10 movie, it still kind of makes me sad that "new" Trek is a reboot of the 60s series?? Maybe it's that I have never cared about TOS, but it's also just that like -- it was so obviously, transparently created for the 60s. People forget that putting a russian man in a trusted position on the bridge was kind of as big a deal as giving a black woman a role besides maid? Because the crew of TOS was specifically formulated to send a progresive message to the people of the 60s! The crew of every newer ST series was meant to send a progressive message too -- but a newer one. So it's kind of weird that we're going back to the old characters, because they don't mean the same things now?? I don't know.
(Every new Star Trek but Enterprise, btw -- in a lot of ways Enterprise is TOS, if Spock were a girl in a catsuit and McCoy were an engineer?? It's a lot less ensemble-y than the other modern Star Treks, the same as TOS (but not AOS, actually, I don't think) in that it is ultra-focused on a "core trio", which is kind of irritating tbh -- it's like they thought since the other Star Treks were progressive they didn't have to take any specific steps towards that? There were a TON of rumors, before Enterprise came out, that it was going to have a gay character, since that was one of the few symbolic barriers Trek hadn't broken, but instead they go obnoxiously out of their way to make sure we know that everyone on the bridge crew is definitely heterosexual, which is especially dumb since Malcolm, Travis, and Hoshi all only do so much and only have so many lines, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN SO EASY to go there, buuuuuuuut no, Berman and Braga are dicks!!! SURPRISE.)
Idk I guess the point I'm very badly coming to is that there's a (large) part of me that really likes the premise of Enterprise?? Just like, the idea of going back to the very beginning, when all this alpha quadrant territory really WAS unexplored and having the Vulcans be condescending and weird and holding them back, and how everyone is a little closer to "our" time? They have movie nights and dogs and blue jeans, and the ship feels more like a submarine than a luxury liner. It's nice that Gene Roddenberry gave us a ~magic federation~ of peaceful species where everything is la-dee-da, but I think where Enterprise was going is way more interesting than seeing Khan again -- it was sort of on the road to showing us how that all came to be, I guess. (And it would have done it well!!! Because by the end Manny Coto was running the show and Manny Coto is kiiiiiiind of a genius.) (Catherine calls him Manicotti :3) The "Coalition" between Vulcans, Andorians, Tellarites and Earth was weird and complicated and politically unstable!! It was starting to make sense why humans held such a place of prominence in the Quadrant!! We were feeling less like the Mary Sue species of Star Trek by the minute!!!! THE ROMULAN WAR WAS COMING UP!
(crying why am I such a nerd, god, ANYWAY!)
THAT SAID, lol Berman and Braga thinking that somehow calling a show ENTERPRISE instead of STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE and a non-instrumental theme song and lots of naked people (SO MANY NAKED PEOPLE!!!!!!) would somehow make it a ~regular~ show that ~non-trekkies~ would want to watch, and also make it feel ~fresh and new~ bc so much of s1 feels EXACTLY like filler Voyager episodes. And like, one-off alien species stories worked on Voyager because when you're setting a show far away from "home", you can totally make a species with a random bump on their forehead that you never intend to use again and like, w/e, it's fine, but it feels weird when Enterprise does it... because theoretically we know the species that live in the Alpha Quadrant!! They're our neighbors!! Why do we never see these people again!!! Who the fuck even are they?!?!?!
That's another thing that's really good about s4 -- NO NEW ALIENS AT ALL. They somehow tell completely compelling stories with only Romulans, Klingons, Vulcans, Tellarites, and Andorians. As it should be!!! S1 and S2's best episodes are the ones with Alpha Q species too, I think -- their ferengi episode was actually enjoyable, the Vulcan/Andorian arc is pretty great ngl, AND THERE'S ONE WITH A KLINGON SHIP IN A GAS GIANT THAT I LOVED, although that was probably mostly because it was also about T'Pol, Malcolm, and Hoshi, and... those are three people that I love. They should have written those stories ALL THE TIME, because humanity's early encounters with those people is actually way more interesting than some dumb alien hunters we'll ever see again (THEY SO WISHED THEY COULD USE THE HIROGEN) hunting "wraith people" on a rogue planet.
The continuity (that is a ~big issue~ in the world of Star Trek) is way better than it is on Voyager though!!! LIKE, EVEN IN S1, MILES BETTER. People act like they were forced into doing the Xindi arc in s3, and they prob were sort of, but there are definitely small arcs going on in the early show and they're constantly referring back to "that time x happened" and it's like, ACTUAL EPISODES THAT HAPPENED THAT ARE RELEVANT TO THE PLOT!!! There's this whole thing at the end of s1 where they decide to go to risa and the two episodes before it start out all "we're going to Risa ....welp no we're not!" and then when they do get to Risa Archer's like "my crew's going to murder me if we don't go to Risa now..."
Too bad the big overarching plot of the early show is about ~the Suliban~ and ~the Kabal~ and ~the Temporal Cold War~ which sounds like it could be cool but NOPE, THE WORST. Also speaking of the arcs, it's weird how even though season 3 is ~THE ARC SEASON~, if you took out a couple of lines about the Xindi almost all the early episodes are exactly the same kind of dumb as season 1 and season 2 are.
Man, season 3. I'm starting to realize that I love how Trip/T'Pol came together, even though it's basically a contrivance for the sake of nakedness??? A lot of Trip/T'Pol fandom seems convinced that Trip and T'Pol had an ~immediate connection~ and they had a chance to end up romantically embroiled in each other no matter what, but to me their entire... romantic thing is so based in the weirdness of the Expanse, in the painfulness of losing a sister, in the awkward intimacy of HOW NAKED YOU HAVE TO BE TO DO NEUROPRESSURE, in the drug addiction. I am just... so obsessed with the idea of them just sitting there talking about their lives to each other during those session because I mean, Trip has to distract himself somehow when T'POL'S BOOBS ARE IN HIS FACE, (only Vulcans, god damn) and then the fact that they're half-naked becomes less and less weird?? Except it still kind of is sometimes because how could it not be. And it slowly sort of becomes most natural for Trip to spend his free time with her -- dinner in the mess hall and her showing up in engineering to lean over his shoulder because the ship is always broken, and she starts to tell him about ancient Vulcan poetry (WAY more interesting and violent than you'd think!) and the history of Vulcan's warp advances and it turns out she really likes human music and the human selection of tea (not that he's a tea person, that's more a Malcolm thing, but he likes that she likes human tea?) and then oh fuck he definitely kind of has feelings that are never going to get reciprocated why is this always his life she's a Vulcan that's even more unattainable than your usual, Tucker.
AND THEN T'POL, my precious little terrible Vulcan, who I think mostly likes being on a ship full of humans because Vulcans know, somehow, how bad she is at being a Vulcan, how close to the surface her emotions are, but humans don't. To them she's just like the rest of them -- arrogant, stuffy, emotionless. But the more she stays with them and gets to FEEL like she fits in back home, the less she actually does??? But in truth she's an outsider in both places. And that's all she's ever wanted, to belong somewhere, and she feels closer to it in these progressively intimate moments with Trip than she ever has anywhere, but she's still not quite there and it's awful, being that close to it but having it all still just -- just out of reach. What she does in "Harbinger" is my FAVORITE, ngl, because to him she is so completely not an option and he accepts that and tries to move on... and in her jealous fit, T'Pol makes herself an option, just the once, because she knows that's all she needs to do to regain his attention. UGH T'POL, MY PRECIOUS, DRUG-ADDLED BB, sometimes she is nuts but she is also just... the greatest!!! I LOVE HER MORE THAN ANYTHING. (People act like her withdrawal from Trip to study the Kir'Shara in s4 is contrived, too, but no!!! THAT WHOLE THING KIND OF KILLS ME, because it's like... that her mom died because she was a Syrannite, and her mom was a Syrannite because of T'Pol's inability to control her emotions. Of course she wants to withdraw into Vulcanness! Of course she doesn't want to turn to Trip, who has come to represent emotional release for her!! U G H season 4 is my everything).
Oh and in case anyone was wondering, Archer is still worse than intolerable. BUT ANYWAY I don't think that this list of ~episodes of Enterprise elapses thinks are worth watching~ will actually be helpful to anyone on my flist, but sometimes I like to pretend that like-minded strangers stumble across these things (...probably because I am constantly creeping around the internet spaces of somewhat-like-minded strangers), even though ten bucks says the only like-minded stranger who will end up here is a future version of me. (Hi, future Alex! Sorry about your Enterprise phase. I feel your pain.) But anyway!
1x03 Fight or Flight (Hoshi-centric!!!)
1x07 The Andorian Incident (VULCAN/ANDORIAN INTRIGUE)
1x08 Breaking the Ice (TRIP AND T'POL BEING YOUNG AND DUMB)
1x12 Silent Enemy (Adorable Malcolm + Hoshi subplot)
1x13 Dear Doctor (~glimpses of denobulan society~, idk if people who are not me would like this)
1x14 Sleeping Dogs (THE KLINGON ONE!!!!!!!)
1x16 Shuttlepod One (basically an entire episode of Trip and Malcolm being lame and cranky)
1x19 Acquisition (the best Ferengi episode of anything I have ever seen, not that that is hard)
1x23 Fallen Hero (I REALLY LIKE THE VULCAN LADY and there's a lot of T'Pol!!!!!)
2x02 Carbon Creek
2x09 Singularity
2x10 Vanishing Point (The reset-button ending is FOREVER OFFENSIVE but I honesty love the rest of the episode so much I still don't care!!! It should have been a two-parter where vanished Hoshi ACTUALLY had to save the ship from those aliens, argh.)
2x12 The Catwalk
2x20 Horizon (TRAVIS' ONLY REAL EPISODE!! Tbh I always thought the Boomer thing was fascinating so I'm glad this, at least, exists. Watch out for Archer hitting on T'Pol though, yuck.)
2x24 First Flight (goldenmelisande always says she hates the scene in the pilot where T'Pol meets Trip and Archer for the first time because there's like this whole... boys club vibe to it?? And on that note this episode, which I'm not sure I would have liked that much/at all without that comment swimming around in my head, fascinates me. Because it does paint a super boys-clubby picture of Starfleet in this era, and I... don't know if the show, even under Manny Coto, would have had the guts to explore a deconstruction of that atmosphere, but this episode made me think about that? Especially since when the Columbia gets launched in s4 the ENTIRE BRIDGE CREW is female, and if you think about it the female members of Archer's crew are the only ones he didn't really choose... T'Pol was assigned to him, Hoshi was unquestionably the best/most brilliant available, whereas all the others are bright, but not so bright that they would have been the only choice. IDK, I AM JUST SUPER FASCINATED BY THE IDEA OF A DE-MASCULINIZATION OF THE MILITARY, SORT OF???)
3x08 Twilight (this is an Archer episode with Archer/T'Pol undertones THAT I LIKE TO ARGUE AWAY but still they are there, and this is still on this list, so.)
3x09 North Star (literally "the Old West: in space!!!" but it works!)
3x10 Similitude
3x15 Harbinger (...I AM WHO I AM)
3x20 The Forgotten
3x21 E²
And literally all of season 4 except 4x01, 4x02, and 4x22 (THE WORST!!!)
But let's be real, the only Enterprise I ever going to watch now that I have finished this journey is the (newly updated!!!!) 4 hour avi file Catherine and I call "Trip/T'Pol: the Movie". (IF ANYONE EVER WANTS A COPY OF THAT, btw, you know where to find me).
IN CONCLUSION, this is the best "Shit Girls Say" parody ever made.
Idk, that is all. I woke up this morning to a COMPLETELY OUT OF THE BLUE defriending by someone I considered a really close friend (seriously! no email, no warning, no explanation, like, WHAT), so it feels kind of... weird? Posting here right now? But I've had a copy of this post sitting in semagic for awhile, waiting to be finished, and I guess I shouldn't let stuff like that stop me. Yeah no, april fool's!