Ashes to Ashes 2:6
Very remiss with this; not sure I enjoy it as much if I don't go through it bit by bit. Which I have now done anyway, and got a lot more out of it once it was under the magnifying glass.
As a whole it felt strangely odd. Someone elsewhere described it as having all the right ingredients but somehow it didn't result in a good episode. The dramatic set pieces felt anti-climatic - again. Alex's operation was all done and dusted half an hour in; reasonably well done (the fact she came across the operation in a kitchen was nicely surreal) but just... undramatic. Gene Hunt's beating up resulted in one visible bruise and a sore shoulder, which was both unlikely and boring. If you're going to make him suffer, wring out all the angst you can, dammit. Sloping off to lick his wounds so obviously also jarred with me - especially given he was spending another episode busily not reacting to Alex. Either make him stony and unemotional, or don't. Preferably don't. Chopping and changing in an episode just feels weird. Operation Rose and the corruption stuff all took a week off too, apart from a bunch of dead roses and a telephone call. Surely the nasty loan shark could have offered Gene a bribe to keep the whole thing in mind? Height ho. So essentially it felt like a filler episode, which annoys me. Only eight hours to play with during which, time and again, possible build-up of tension has been frittered away by being resolved too quickly. And yet they have filler episodes where nothing much happens and what does has all the emotional involvement of deciding between white or wholemeal for your sandwich? Gah.
There were some silly set pieces too; the wrecking yard, breaking into Riley's office, and the letters. They all required intelligent people - Gene and Alex - to do things without any thought of consequences, and I can't cope with such a suspension of disbelief. I'm having to suspend it all the time to allow Alex to be running around in 1982 - I need the characters to be a little bit dependable in their choices or have better reasons for doing something unlikely. And it worries me that I don't care about what happens to Chris and Shaz. Underneath this weevily carapace is an old romantic softy who boards pretty nearly any 'ship offered up and yet I can't work up any enthusiasm for them at all. I'm thinking I can't be alone in this, 'cos after 14 episodes there doesn't seem to be portmanteau word to describe them and the number of Chris/Shaz icons of romance I've seen can be counted on the fingers of a blind butcher. Why? After episode 1:7 and Chris' weepy declarations over the dying Shaz I really felt for him, but there's just been nothing to work on in series two. It's been played for comedy to such an extent that the emotion is just MIA. It's a shame, 'cos it certainly doesn't look like it's the actors' faults.
On the plus side, Alex and Ray seem to have managed to continue to improve their relationship. Yay! That probably means Ray's being set up to be the bad guy then... Some nice understated comedy between them too; character driven rather than situation, which is what I like best. And given that Philip Glenister has a whole thread on TRA entitled 'Stealing the Show', I believe it has to be said that so far I think Keeley's utterly stolen the crown from him this series. Mind you, I thought she was brilliant in series one as well; it was just the way the character was written that sometimes made Alex hard to like.
Anyway, three-quarters of the way through, I have good hopes this whole series will work a lot better once it's all in and we can see the whole caboodle. See? I'm a positive-thinking weevil really.
As a whole it felt strangely odd. Someone elsewhere described it as having all the right ingredients but somehow it didn't result in a good episode. The dramatic set pieces felt anti-climatic - again. Alex's operation was all done and dusted half an hour in; reasonably well done (the fact she came across the operation in a kitchen was nicely surreal) but just... undramatic. Gene Hunt's beating up resulted in one visible bruise and a sore shoulder, which was both unlikely and boring. If you're going to make him suffer, wring out all the angst you can, dammit. Sloping off to lick his wounds so obviously also jarred with me - especially given he was spending another episode busily not reacting to Alex. Either make him stony and unemotional, or don't. Preferably don't. Chopping and changing in an episode just feels weird. Operation Rose and the corruption stuff all took a week off too, apart from a bunch of dead roses and a telephone call. Surely the nasty loan shark could have offered Gene a bribe to keep the whole thing in mind? Height ho. So essentially it felt like a filler episode, which annoys me. Only eight hours to play with during which, time and again, possible build-up of tension has been frittered away by being resolved too quickly. And yet they have filler episodes where nothing much happens and what does has all the emotional involvement of deciding between white or wholemeal for your sandwich? Gah.
There were some silly set pieces too; the wrecking yard, breaking into Riley's office, and the letters. They all required intelligent people - Gene and Alex - to do things without any thought of consequences, and I can't cope with such a suspension of disbelief. I'm having to suspend it all the time to allow Alex to be running around in 1982 - I need the characters to be a little bit dependable in their choices or have better reasons for doing something unlikely. And it worries me that I don't care about what happens to Chris and Shaz. Underneath this weevily carapace is an old romantic softy who boards pretty nearly any 'ship offered up and yet I can't work up any enthusiasm for them at all. I'm thinking I can't be alone in this, 'cos after 14 episodes there doesn't seem to be portmanteau word to describe them and the number of Chris/Shaz icons of romance I've seen can be counted on the fingers of a blind butcher. Why? After episode 1:7 and Chris' weepy declarations over the dying Shaz I really felt for him, but there's just been nothing to work on in series two. It's been played for comedy to such an extent that the emotion is just MIA. It's a shame, 'cos it certainly doesn't look like it's the actors' faults.
On the plus side, Alex and Ray seem to have managed to continue to improve their relationship. Yay! That probably means Ray's being set up to be the bad guy then... Some nice understated comedy between them too; character driven rather than situation, which is what I like best. And given that Philip Glenister has a whole thread on TRA entitled 'Stealing the Show', I believe it has to be said that so far I think Keeley's utterly stolen the crown from him this series. Mind you, I thought she was brilliant in series one as well; it was just the way the character was written that sometimes made Alex hard to like.
Anyway, three-quarters of the way through, I have good hopes this whole series will work a lot better once it's all in and we can see the whole caboodle. See? I'm a positive-thinking weevil really.