I'm probably going to get a big WTF for this, but my WEE is Maelstrom. According to your criteria, here is my rationale.
1. It has to have impacted the show negatively in terms of something I care about. They killed Kara. They made her crazy, made her hallucinate. They made her child abuse (overkill) and her crazy Leoben vision the reasons she dove into the maelstrom. Since when did Kara have visions? Was she taking kamala and no one told me? It seemed so sudden - so random and contrived. The heavy-handedness of this ep makes me angry. Yes, I am touched by the sadness of Kara's abuse and by the heart warming reunion with her mother, but they killed a main character for mystical reasons and it felt like another "shock value" manipulation.
2. While it doesn't have to be entirely badly written, the badness can't be counterbalanced by positive stuff that I am strongly invested in. If I could have bought into the whole Kara has a destiny and must die to fulfill it aspect of the show, I would have probably enjoyed it. Now, it frustrates
( ... )
OMG!! I COMPLETELY FORGOT HOW MUCH I HATE SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME!!!
I must renege on my vote for TABFAYW and switch it over to Someone to Watch Over Me. A whole episode to focus on Kara and they did nothing to move her character forward or give her any answers (since Dreilide =/= Daniel as any logical person might guess at that point), instead they just gave her a conversation with a ghost that supposedly made everything better and a weak-ass memory of a song that she could have remembered at any fucking time along the way and did not need to die for!!! OMG YES. This one. I subjectively hate it then and now, it impacted the show negatively because we were clearly supposed to see crappy mysticism and head people were the answers to everything, and the writing was terrible. So on the nose! Kara spilling out her troubles to mystery guy at bar! Not recognizing her own father?! BOO. BOO!!!!
Hey, there'll be no WTFing from me in this post, since I know just how individual and subjecting these things are. That said, OMG I love Someone to Watch Over Me! *g* I talk more about why here if you're interested. I think though that it may have something to do with my disillusionment with the show that at that point, I was no longer expecting to get any answers about Kara. I had hopes, but no expectations - and I also had a lot of fears that we might get answers that were both definitive and HORRIBLE. *g* Eddie was hinting at that in interviews, actually. In retrospect I think he was just referring to the scene where she finds her body, which never horrified me all that much. And in even more retro-spect, I think Kara's ~destiny was always mainly about coming to terms with her past, and the sci-fi trappings were just that. And surprisingly I'm pretty okay with that
( ... )
I guess having missed all of the foreshadowing, it really just took my by surprise. At the time, I had all of the thoughts I describe above, but the episode did not seem to be the worst episode ever. Looking back, however, it's like the crack between two great shows. Everything changes after Maelstrom, not just Kara, but the whole show jumps headlong into the cylons world and the mysticism. Maybe I'm too much of a sci-fi readerly geek, but Maelstrom and her return later signify a reduction in reliance on humanity as a race that can problem-solve and survive in deference to a higher power controlling everything. The thing I loved about the show pre-Maelstrom (and maybe a few eps dotted before that) was that humans had to be ingenious, clever, resourceful in order to survive. I feel like that was lost when the show began to sink into mysteries hooded in religious and mysticism. I have no problem with those to things, per se, but for me, someone re-imagined the re-imagined series - right in the middle of the run
( ... )
The thing I loved about the show pre-Maelstrom (and maybe a few eps dotted before that) was that humans had to be ingenious, clever, resourceful in order to survive.
x2. Exactly the same thing I loved about "Lost", and exactly the same thing that show forgot about as it started to lose direction.
1. It has to have impacted the show negatively in terms of something I care about. They killed Kara. They made her crazy, made her hallucinate. They made her child abuse (overkill) and her crazy Leoben vision the reasons she dove into the maelstrom. Since when did Kara have visions? Was she taking kamala and no one told me? It seemed so sudden - so random and contrived. The heavy-handedness of this ep makes me angry. Yes, I am touched by the sadness of Kara's abuse and by the heart warming reunion with her mother, but they killed a main character for mystical reasons and it felt like another "shock value" manipulation.
2. While it doesn't have to be entirely badly written, the badness can't be counterbalanced by positive stuff that I am strongly invested in. If I could have bought into the whole Kara has a destiny and must die to fulfill it aspect of the show, I would have probably enjoyed it. Now, it frustrates ( ... )
Reply
I must renege on my vote for TABFAYW and switch it over to Someone to Watch Over Me. A whole episode to focus on Kara and they did nothing to move her character forward or give her any answers (since Dreilide =/= Daniel as any logical person might guess at that point), instead they just gave her a conversation with a ghost that supposedly made everything better and a weak-ass memory of a song that she could have remembered at any fucking time along the way and did not need to die for!!! OMG YES. This one. I subjectively hate it then and now, it impacted the show negatively because we were clearly supposed to see crappy mysticism and head people were the answers to everything, and the writing was terrible. So on the nose! Kara spilling out her troubles to mystery guy at bar! Not recognizing her own father?! BOO. BOO!!!!
Reply
Character Annihilation FTW.
Reply
Reply
Reply
x2. Exactly the same thing I loved about "Lost", and exactly the same thing that show forgot about as it started to lose direction.
Reply
Leave a comment