Revenge: The TV Series
Well, I tried watching Revenge, which a number of people recced. It did not work for me.
Part of the problem was that I was starting in the middle and had no idea who any of the characters were. I knew that there was a girl (or woman--I wasn't sure about her age) who was trying to avenge her family, which had been injured in some way by the people in the neighborhood where the girl was now living. I wasn't sure whether her family had been ruined financially or had lost its reputation or had all been killed off, but I figured that I'd pick that up from the story.
I did not.
Going into this blind proved to be confusing. The only thing that I gathered about any of the characters was that they were interchangeable backstabbing rich bastards who not only looked similar but sounded similar as well. I honestly saw nothing to distinguish any of the Graysons from each other; they were just your basic fucked-up soap opera family. And the fact that they were rich made them less interesting to me, not more.
Let me explain something. I don't have any difficulty watching shows about people from the distant past who were rich and/or powerful. The Medicis. The Borgias. The Roman emperors. That's fine. That's interesting. But rich people in today's world have less reality for me than the Medicis...or the Animaniacs, for that matter. I've read about the Medicis; I've seen Yacko, Wacko and Dot. They've both been part of my life.
If the problems of poor people have no reality for most rich politicians (assuming that said politicians are not all media-crafted pixellated descendants of Max Headroom--the jury is still out on that), then the alleged problems of rich people have no reality for me, either. Rich people do not have problems; they have money, which removes problems. They do not have to worry about where they will get the money to pay bills and/or rent and/or taxes, buy clothes and shoes, buy food, pay for doctors, maintain their health, afford home repairs, pay for education and so on. I assume that they can still have family and relationship issues, but they can also more easily afford counselors, psychologists, therapists and, if worst comes to worst, lawyers.
So, as a result, I was not disposed to pity the Graysons. (Poor choice of name. I couldn't stop thinking about Dick Grayson for a second.) Most of their difficulties, from what I could tell, could have been solved by contrite apologies, restitution and not acting like bastards after the problem had been smoothed over. I could not like them.
And yet I couldn't like Emily--the vengeful one--either. I didn't feel sorry for her. I didn't feel that she should get revenge, after all she'd been through. Instead, I felt that she and the Graysons were as bad as each other.
It might have been better if I could have figured out what the hell was going on. Someone that I didn't know had been kidnapped and someone else that I didn't know was competing to close a huge business deal. And that was it. I watched the show for forty-five minutes and the plot never got any clearer. I suspect that the plot would have made a lot more sense if I'd known who the characters were and how they were all interrelated....but the script was not written to accommodate first-time viewers as as well as seasoned ones. So, on the forty-sixth minute, I gave up.
And that was Revenge. I'm sorry, folks. I really expected to love it. I'm bitterly disappointed that I didn't.
***
Part of the problem was that I was starting in the middle and had no idea who any of the characters were. I knew that there was a girl (or woman--I wasn't sure about her age) who was trying to avenge her family, which had been injured in some way by the people in the neighborhood where the girl was now living. I wasn't sure whether her family had been ruined financially or had lost its reputation or had all been killed off, but I figured that I'd pick that up from the story.
I did not.
Going into this blind proved to be confusing. The only thing that I gathered about any of the characters was that they were interchangeable backstabbing rich bastards who not only looked similar but sounded similar as well. I honestly saw nothing to distinguish any of the Graysons from each other; they were just your basic fucked-up soap opera family. And the fact that they were rich made them less interesting to me, not more.
Let me explain something. I don't have any difficulty watching shows about people from the distant past who were rich and/or powerful. The Medicis. The Borgias. The Roman emperors. That's fine. That's interesting. But rich people in today's world have less reality for me than the Medicis...or the Animaniacs, for that matter. I've read about the Medicis; I've seen Yacko, Wacko and Dot. They've both been part of my life.
If the problems of poor people have no reality for most rich politicians (assuming that said politicians are not all media-crafted pixellated descendants of Max Headroom--the jury is still out on that), then the alleged problems of rich people have no reality for me, either. Rich people do not have problems; they have money, which removes problems. They do not have to worry about where they will get the money to pay bills and/or rent and/or taxes, buy clothes and shoes, buy food, pay for doctors, maintain their health, afford home repairs, pay for education and so on. I assume that they can still have family and relationship issues, but they can also more easily afford counselors, psychologists, therapists and, if worst comes to worst, lawyers.
So, as a result, I was not disposed to pity the Graysons. (Poor choice of name. I couldn't stop thinking about Dick Grayson for a second.) Most of their difficulties, from what I could tell, could have been solved by contrite apologies, restitution and not acting like bastards after the problem had been smoothed over. I could not like them.
And yet I couldn't like Emily--the vengeful one--either. I didn't feel sorry for her. I didn't feel that she should get revenge, after all she'd been through. Instead, I felt that she and the Graysons were as bad as each other.
It might have been better if I could have figured out what the hell was going on. Someone that I didn't know had been kidnapped and someone else that I didn't know was competing to close a huge business deal. And that was it. I watched the show for forty-five minutes and the plot never got any clearer. I suspect that the plot would have made a lot more sense if I'd known who the characters were and how they were all interrelated....but the script was not written to accommodate first-time viewers as as well as seasoned ones. So, on the forty-sixth minute, I gave up.
And that was Revenge. I'm sorry, folks. I really expected to love it. I'm bitterly disappointed that I didn't.
***