you are possible with me.

[ever_neutral]

So I assume everyone has heard that The Hour has been axed. Right after I'd finally finished watching both series, no less. IS THERE NO GOD IN THE WORLD. Cry @ me and spam Bel/Freddie gifs.

Also, mollivanders asked me a while back for a picspam of Freddie/smoking for that screencap meme thing. Back then I hadn't actually watched a full episode of the show so I put it to the side. Until yesterday when, in the midst of choosing caps, I heard The News. What a terrible night. Anyway.



all caps from grande-caps on lj.

And... posting a review seems redundant now, but brief thoughts for the sake of masochism:

• I am in love with everyone and their hair.
• Except Hector, I guess, whom I didn't really warm up to until midway through S2 -- right about that time he got his corrupt police officer friend whose name I don't give a shit about on the air to blast him good and proper. Good.
• My caring more for Hector in late S2 also coincided with him recognizing his poor treatment of queen Marnie and the mini-arc of him learning to respect her. I even had some warm fuzzy feelings at their last scene in 2.05! Chaste sleeping-in-bed-together gets me every time. And I adored the scene in the finale when she tells him she's pregnant with another man's child, and Hector is so understanding and genuinely happy for her successfully moving on, because he can't be otherwise, not after everything he's done. Also:
• MARNIE MADDEN EXISTS. Both the scene where she confronts Bel about the affair and the scene in the car where she tells Hector that their marriage is for all intents and purposes over were some of the best in the series. Her development in S2 was such a highlight.
• Kiki Delaine's arc through S2 was another. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH THAT FINALE. God bless this show for caring about women.
• Related: "All I could see was the men who buy these photos." WEEPING.
• This show gets a lot of comparisons to Mad Men, and while I think that that show is actually also pretty good with its women, The Hour will always have the edge in my heart for not making a program ostensibly showcasing the social injustices of a given era revolve around a privileged abusive white dick! I feel like Hector as a character is the far more succinctly executed (and tolerable) Don Draper, but free of glamorization and the show's catering to self-absorbed angst. (Lord, why does Don Draper exist.)
• LIX STORM EXISTS.
• BEL ROWLEY EXISTS.
• (you see where i'm going with this)
• Lix/Randall is the OTP, y/n? Don't even talk to me about how we'll never get in-depth fill-in-the-blanks flashbacks about their history. Don't even talk to me about it.
• Also, Randall is Sid Jenkins' father.
• RME @ the half-baked Bel/Freddie/Camille triangle storyline in S2. Disappointed that Camille was literally invented just to give Bel and Freddie angst, never fleshed out as a character, and then shipped away off-screen in service of the show's OTP. Uncharacteristically lazy writing for this show, tbh.
• And I say this as someone who is completely far and gone with Bel/Freddie. They are the air that I breathe. I don't want to talk about it. I particularly don't want to talk about how much I lost it at Freddie's last "moneypenny" in the finale. Oh God. I can't.
• Okay fine I'm talking about it. The thing that really makes Bel/Freddie for me is that despite their differences, they are completely kindred spirits -- they BELIEVE IN what they're doing, they would die for it, and even with their mutual plain ambition they're both driven at the end of the day by caring too much. They are so gloriously dissatisfied with the state of the world in which they reside. OTP.
• (Aside: I don't believe for a second that Freddie got married in an attempt to ~lure Bel in because she has a bad habit with married men. I think that was his honest attempt to actually move the hell on. Which, obviously, failed miserably.)
• On a related note, the moment I really fell for Bel was in S1 when she admitted to her mother that she can't take things lightly, that everything affects her too much. It was the moment where everything about her character fell into place for me, especially the inexplicable affair with Hector. I like the idea that she fell into that relationship -- that she keeps falling into these sorts of relationships -- because she wants to prove that she can not care so much. Not about the adultery, not about the romance, not even about the person themselves. Compare this to how much she is consumed by Freddie, and runs from it -- until she can't anymore.
• ALSO: "I am tired of it not being possible. It is possible. You are possible. You are possible with me." -- IS A LINE THAT EXISTS. DON'T EVEN LOOK AT ME. DON'T FUCKING LOOK.
• OH NO I CAN'T STOP. "But I am not as brave as you. I want to write and say I’ll be there. I’ll get on a plane, I’ll come right now. I really do. But I can’t. Not because I don’t love you. I love you, Freddie Lyon. But because you won’t even get this letter. Because I won’t ever send it. I’m the coward Freddie, not you. So, instead, I’m sending this prayer out there. Just hoping that somehow you’ll know to come home. Just please come home. Now, soon and maybe your courage will make me brave too. Just come home and I will leap too." NOTHING WILL EVER BE OKAY AGAIN.
• DON'T EVEN TALK TO ME.