Open Letter (not quite a Torchwood ep review)
*spoilers within only if you're really fussy about getting spoilt. Nothing specific; this is mostly just a rant*
Dear Torchwood Writers,
Please let go of my hand. No, I mean it. Please just let go of my fucking hand.
When I was a kid I - and almost everyone I knew - loved He-Man and She-Ra. Well, all except for one thing. The last 2 minutes. They'd tack on this stupid moralizing bit and it would annoy us. We were 8. And it annoyed us then to be patronized. Imagine being 31 and being made to feel this way by a show that everyone keeps telling us for "adults".
A morality tale is all well and good - I enjoy morality tales - but, for the love of all things bendy, show, don't bloody tell. If you haven't been able to get your moral across in the previous 40 mins and feel you have to tack it on the end, then you probably should have re-written the whole damned thing to make it was so unambiguous that it subliminally steals into your brain and is impossible to miss.
I think you DID actually get your moral across rather well in Random Shoes during the main body of the episode. I enjoyed it. I felt good about the storyline. It had some flaky moments that didn't hang together but, on the whole, I liked it. I liked the funky twist at the end. Very smart and it made me genuinely smile with just the right hint of sadness. I thought it was one of the best episodes we've had. Even my boyfriend liked it, and he's not been enjoying the show so far. It was a small story, with big themes, told in an intelligent way.
But then there was that final monologue and those visuals. Why?! It was patronizing. It was a big, stupidly grand gesture of unnecessary crapness, that just felt like someone was trying to bludgeon us with the Big Squishy Hammer of Morality(TM) and bury us in a mountain of cuddly bollocks about how to live our lives. No. Just no.
Let go of my fucking hand. M'kay?
Love and poodles,
Erykah
Dear Torchwood Writers,
Please let go of my hand. No, I mean it. Please just let go of my fucking hand.
When I was a kid I - and almost everyone I knew - loved He-Man and She-Ra. Well, all except for one thing. The last 2 minutes. They'd tack on this stupid moralizing bit and it would annoy us. We were 8. And it annoyed us then to be patronized. Imagine being 31 and being made to feel this way by a show that everyone keeps telling us for "adults".
A morality tale is all well and good - I enjoy morality tales - but, for the love of all things bendy, show, don't bloody tell. If you haven't been able to get your moral across in the previous 40 mins and feel you have to tack it on the end, then you probably should have re-written the whole damned thing to make it was so unambiguous that it subliminally steals into your brain and is impossible to miss.
I think you DID actually get your moral across rather well in Random Shoes during the main body of the episode. I enjoyed it. I felt good about the storyline. It had some flaky moments that didn't hang together but, on the whole, I liked it. I liked the funky twist at the end. Very smart and it made me genuinely smile with just the right hint of sadness. I thought it was one of the best episodes we've had. Even my boyfriend liked it, and he's not been enjoying the show so far. It was a small story, with big themes, told in an intelligent way.
But then there was that final monologue and those visuals. Why?! It was patronizing. It was a big, stupidly grand gesture of unnecessary crapness, that just felt like someone was trying to bludgeon us with the Big Squishy Hammer of Morality(TM) and bury us in a mountain of cuddly bollocks about how to live our lives. No. Just no.
Let go of my fucking hand. M'kay?
Love and poodles,
Erykah