A rant about the TV show Luther
My boyfriend's been trying to get me into watching more TV. He's a special fan of BBC, so after the success of Sherlock, he wanted me to give Luther a try. I couldn't get through the first episode.
The protagonist and title character of the show is a very big man, tall and physical. We're introduced to him as he's letting a criminal hang from a height and when he could save the man, he doesn't, letting him fall. The man is in a coma afterwards and seven months later, Luther is cleared of wrongdoing and reinstated on the police force as a detective. Immediately, I'm not very happy about this, but whatever. Luther celebrates being cleared of suspicion by calling his wife, from whom he's been separated for six months. He tells her he's fulfilled her conditions - stayed away, gotten himself back together, got his job back. So they can go back to being married, right? But she has a boyfriend now and tells him she and he need to talk.
He goes out on his case, is very threatening and intimidating to his suspect in a bogey-man sort of way. Rather than coming off as righteous justice, it comes off as him promising to get even and being angry that anyone might get away with something on his watch. He's motivated by wanting to control people, not by being compassionate to them.
This becomes very clear when he visits his wife's place and she breaks the news to him that she doesn't want to reconcile. She tells him, reluctantly, that she's met someone else as he rails and glowers. He throws a fit, smashing a door into flinders right in front of her, screaming at it and working himself into a Hulk rage. Remember how big this guy is. And of course his wife is the typical TV love interest woman - small, thin, beautiful, unphysical. He doesn't attack her directly, but I've been in her shoes way too many times. He doesn't have to. In my ex's rages, I would always wish that he *would* attack me, because then at least it would be direct, I'd have evidence and marks of what he was doing to me ... but he was never that stupid and neither is Luther.
At that point, I hated Luther and started making bitter cracks about him as the show went on. I sympathized more with the villain who had killed her parents and her dog, and was a psychopath, possibly a narcissist. I thought the show was unfair to her and Luther in particular was an ass. I gave her the Sylar mental makeover, where despite her inhumanity and murderous actions, she could do no wrong. This, too, bothered me.
Luther went to his wife's work (she's a lawyer or a legal aide), interrupted her with clients, and ordered them out of her office. He shut the door and locked it - another intimidation technique, preventing outside assistance and trapping her with him. She told him his outbursts like this could get her fired. He ignored her concern and launched into an interrogation about why she was leaving him. My ex would frequently threaten to disrupt my job - to call my bosses, show up at my building (which he did several times), call me until I picked up (which was super-annoying when I was trying to have a conversation with someone in my office and the phone keeps ringing and ringing and ringing call after call).
The last straw was when Luther came to his wife (ex-wife? she called him her ex-husband, so?)'s house and started banging on the door and ringing the bell, refusing to go away until she talked to him. She called the cops. Her boyfriend went out to tell him to go away. He tried to push past him. They argued, the boyfriend blocked him and hit him. Luther grabbed the boyfriend by the throat and dragged him to the street, apparently preparing to beat the crap out of him. The cops arrived, but Luther was able to show them his badge and back them down, reveling in pulling rank on them, ("You see that? That means I'm higher than you! So back off!") At this point, the woman comes out.
I fly into a rage. All she's taught him is what the cost is to get his way with her. She's showed him he needs to be aggressive, violent, and threatening and she'll do what he says. He will escalate from here if there's any realism to this show. He tells her how all he wanted was to talk with her and blames her for all of this - the assault on her boyfriend, the presence of the cops, etc. Then he hugs her, which she clearly doesn't invite. The camera zooms to her face, tears threatening to fall, and I turn it off, firmly and angrily saying, "I'm not watching that!"
My boyfriend said cautiously, "You mean the rest of the episode? It's almost over."
Me: "No, the whole show. Any of it. I can't take that. It's horrible."
Then I make a grueling attempt not to be all trigger-happy and rant-having at him over the whole thing. I reminded him of the number of doors my ex destroyed in the course of our marriage, how I'd mentioned the work intimidation to him, how even if Luther wasn't hitting her, he was engaging in emotional abuse. He got it. He apologized for not thinking about the content of the show. I tried to drop it. But oh - I am still so angry about that fucking show. I thought ranting about it might help. Maybe it has. At least I've gotten it 'out'.
The thing that really pisses me off is where I imagine the show is going from here. We'll be treated to an ongoing tug-of-war where he intimidates her or maybe she reconsiders and feels love for him, and eventually she'll flee him in terror or fall back into his arms and try to make it work. Neither one are things I want to see happen, because I'm sure what we WON'T see is him figuring out how much of a horrible person he is and getting better for his own sake (rather than just acting better as a manipulative effort to get her back, like she's a wayward possession he can't stand to be without.
Agh! I'm in such a rage about this. Grrr.
The protagonist and title character of the show is a very big man, tall and physical. We're introduced to him as he's letting a criminal hang from a height and when he could save the man, he doesn't, letting him fall. The man is in a coma afterwards and seven months later, Luther is cleared of wrongdoing and reinstated on the police force as a detective. Immediately, I'm not very happy about this, but whatever. Luther celebrates being cleared of suspicion by calling his wife, from whom he's been separated for six months. He tells her he's fulfilled her conditions - stayed away, gotten himself back together, got his job back. So they can go back to being married, right? But she has a boyfriend now and tells him she and he need to talk.
He goes out on his case, is very threatening and intimidating to his suspect in a bogey-man sort of way. Rather than coming off as righteous justice, it comes off as him promising to get even and being angry that anyone might get away with something on his watch. He's motivated by wanting to control people, not by being compassionate to them.
This becomes very clear when he visits his wife's place and she breaks the news to him that she doesn't want to reconcile. She tells him, reluctantly, that she's met someone else as he rails and glowers. He throws a fit, smashing a door into flinders right in front of her, screaming at it and working himself into a Hulk rage. Remember how big this guy is. And of course his wife is the typical TV love interest woman - small, thin, beautiful, unphysical. He doesn't attack her directly, but I've been in her shoes way too many times. He doesn't have to. In my ex's rages, I would always wish that he *would* attack me, because then at least it would be direct, I'd have evidence and marks of what he was doing to me ... but he was never that stupid and neither is Luther.
At that point, I hated Luther and started making bitter cracks about him as the show went on. I sympathized more with the villain who had killed her parents and her dog, and was a psychopath, possibly a narcissist. I thought the show was unfair to her and Luther in particular was an ass. I gave her the Sylar mental makeover, where despite her inhumanity and murderous actions, she could do no wrong. This, too, bothered me.
Luther went to his wife's work (she's a lawyer or a legal aide), interrupted her with clients, and ordered them out of her office. He shut the door and locked it - another intimidation technique, preventing outside assistance and trapping her with him. She told him his outbursts like this could get her fired. He ignored her concern and launched into an interrogation about why she was leaving him. My ex would frequently threaten to disrupt my job - to call my bosses, show up at my building (which he did several times), call me until I picked up (which was super-annoying when I was trying to have a conversation with someone in my office and the phone keeps ringing and ringing and ringing call after call).
The last straw was when Luther came to his wife (ex-wife? she called him her ex-husband, so?)'s house and started banging on the door and ringing the bell, refusing to go away until she talked to him. She called the cops. Her boyfriend went out to tell him to go away. He tried to push past him. They argued, the boyfriend blocked him and hit him. Luther grabbed the boyfriend by the throat and dragged him to the street, apparently preparing to beat the crap out of him. The cops arrived, but Luther was able to show them his badge and back them down, reveling in pulling rank on them, ("You see that? That means I'm higher than you! So back off!") At this point, the woman comes out.
I fly into a rage. All she's taught him is what the cost is to get his way with her. She's showed him he needs to be aggressive, violent, and threatening and she'll do what he says. He will escalate from here if there's any realism to this show. He tells her how all he wanted was to talk with her and blames her for all of this - the assault on her boyfriend, the presence of the cops, etc. Then he hugs her, which she clearly doesn't invite. The camera zooms to her face, tears threatening to fall, and I turn it off, firmly and angrily saying, "I'm not watching that!"
My boyfriend said cautiously, "You mean the rest of the episode? It's almost over."
Me: "No, the whole show. Any of it. I can't take that. It's horrible."
Then I make a grueling attempt not to be all trigger-happy and rant-having at him over the whole thing. I reminded him of the number of doors my ex destroyed in the course of our marriage, how I'd mentioned the work intimidation to him, how even if Luther wasn't hitting her, he was engaging in emotional abuse. He got it. He apologized for not thinking about the content of the show. I tried to drop it. But oh - I am still so angry about that fucking show. I thought ranting about it might help. Maybe it has. At least I've gotten it 'out'.
The thing that really pisses me off is where I imagine the show is going from here. We'll be treated to an ongoing tug-of-war where he intimidates her or maybe she reconsiders and feels love for him, and eventually she'll flee him in terror or fall back into his arms and try to make it work. Neither one are things I want to see happen, because I'm sure what we WON'T see is him figuring out how much of a horrible person he is and getting better for his own sake (rather than just acting better as a manipulative effort to get her back, like she's a wayward possession he can't stand to be without.
Agh! I'm in such a rage about this. Grrr.