Kate Freelander and the Uncanny Valley of Sorting Algorithm or Moralities
I'm a new fan, and I'm struggling to like Kate.
My problem with Kate's acceptance into Team S, and me struggling with why I could like Jack the Ripper but not forgive Kate's kidnapping and selling of Martin Wood:
I watched the episodes out of order, I watched clips out of order. Now, Helen Magnus, or rather the unreasonable hotness of Helene Magnus, is why I keep watching, but I tuned in for Vampire Nikola Tesla, so I have actually watched clips of his scenes before the whole episodes before.
I think I saw the clips of the Helen tied up scene in "Sleepers", and when Kate started swearing at Nikola, I like her.
The problem with Kate goes back to her introduction in "Revelations", she was involved in the first place because she did business with Cabal, she kidnapped and then sold Martin Wood into enslavement by the Cabal. Martin Wood was a poor orphan who was so disenfranchised, he was experimented on as a child in Project Montana before Magnus pulled the plug on it. Eventually life for Martin Wood ended when Team Sanctuary had to kill him before he could kill them.
I've seen everything from the series opener up to Eulogy, where, having known her for less than a week, and having found her after she kidnapped and sold someone, she seem accepted as a part of the team already, and I don't get it.
...I find myself struggling to like her, and I know I'm not the only one: Kate is very very charming, that's probably how she got into Martin Wood's house. It's not just me, and I have to wonder how fair it is, that Jack the Ripper and vampire Nikola Tesla are relatively undisputed fan favourites. Here's the thing though, neither Jack nor Nikola was accepted in show. Whenever they do something bad, Helen can say she's not surprised, whereas ever little things they do is pleasant surprises.
Jack the Ripper murdered a lot of women, women in disfranchised circumstances. We know he's a bad guy, we can still feel sympathy for him when he lost his daughter and the fact that the woman he's in love with won't be with him, but we don't argue (at least most of us don't) that there isn't a reason why Helen isn't with him: the women he murdered. I like John the same way I like Methos (Highlanders), they are charming charming men not wholly without sympathy, but just like how I won't begrudge ANYTHING Cassandra does to Methos (she has right of grievance since Methos kidnapped and raped her thousands of years ago), if a sex worker were to turn John into a canoe, I won't say anything stupid like, "but he doesn't deserve that!", even though I do like him. I know where he is on the scale.
Kate on the other hand, she's harder to like even though she's very charming, because she had been accepted onto the Good Guys Side. We are judging her with different standards. We judge characters like John and Nikola with the Anti-Villain scale (which tend to be forgiving for any crime up to killing children or committing rape, although even then there are Extreme fans who would actually say things like, "Cassandra is totally overreacting"). Kate has been accepted among the good guys, and we judge her by those standards.
I'll just, like to see the whole, Martin Wood thing addressed. Right now, she totally reads as a Faith Lehane type character (and I liked Faith a lot), but without her Faith Lehane issues addressed: that being Martin Wood. Kate is young, I'll like to see her slowly grow into awareness of the things she does, did, and what it means.
Now, in addition to the Sorting Algorithm of Moralities, there is the issue of how the actions of the characters have been presented, AND gender bias.
The Cabal agents that Nikola killed in The Five are nameless, or if they are named, I forgot them, they were bodies on a field. The sex workers that John murdered, outside of the canon five, were also nameless. I give great credit to the actress who portrayed the woman we saw murdered on screen in the first episode, but over all, it was a case of Disposable Sex Worker. This was modern times in a local place, we NEVER do hear of her again do we? Not even a missing poster?
Martin Wood on the other hand, we didn't see the man on screen pre-mind rape, but we have a name, we knew he was an orphan (hearstring tugging), we saw his home, something that gives gives reality to the character.
Finally, I want to address the issue of colour, or race. I have remarked repeatedly before, that for a show set in Canada, we sure do have a monochrome cast, and all the Unfortunate Implications that carries, especially in "Kush". The first Sanctuary regular (someone who has regular contact with Sanctuary, and is a potential for being a series regular), was Sylvio Rudd. I remember when he was shot in the first or second episode, I was thinking "here we go again, black guy dies first!". He didn't, he survive to die second in "Kush", his second appearance. On first appearance, we are presented with someone who wasn't that trustworthy, someone who was thinking about selling to others, someone who has been known to give bad tips and worry about his cheque in the middle of a everyone is dying crisis.
Then there is the family with the othered person abnormal that opened the series, the Russian family who don't speak English well (Alien Detected!), aka the Shifty Foreigners Hiding Something. I don't think I've said it before, because I didn't know how to word it then, but watching it, I did get a great sense of Othering, that the Russian family in question are less than persons, more like plot devices. It didn't have to be this way. The Empathis from Mumbai in "Haunted" didn't speak English, but TPTB gave them a voice with subtitles. I think the series opener could have been greatly improved if a member of the adopted boy's foster family had checked up on the boy or something.
So far, so not good, so not good, so the addition of Kate is TPTB trying, they were probably trying for 'like Clara, except coloured', but dudes, kidnapping =/= stealing, her characterization and how people reacted to her so far, seem to be, "Clara, more confrontational", so really, it would be much easier to just pretend "Martin Wood never happened", but it did, and this is something that the show has better addressed (unless they did already?). In "Eulogy", Kate was so soft she didn't even take the horn after the baby made a baby face, and in her intro, you could see her sympathizing when she found out that Helen was looking for Ashley, SO, surmising from that - Kate only does what she did for Cabal when provided with plausible deniability. She didn't know who Martin Wood was or what they were going to do to him.
...but she still did it, and they have to address it.
...but, great gods of gazzillion hornets, if Kate ever gets confronted about her past shadiness, I don't want to see it be from Helen for obvious Unfortunate Implications and Jack the Ripper. I think Helen's crime is less because she didn't deliver Jack's victims and she was in love, but I think Helen is somewhat culpable that the most she did to curb the teleporting serial killer (that at the very least, she knows gained telportablity from her experiment), was NOT extend his life again.
ETA: Oh, now adding in "Instinct", Unsympathetic Coloured Characters definitely greatly outnumbered the good ones.
Unsympathetic:
- Leader of the Cabal squad (and may I say it was most Unfortunate Implications, that in the episode where Cabal was introduced, "Fata Morgana", you have a squad lead by a black guy taking back their white women property? What the hell?)
- Nameless smirking Shifty Foreigners that John hired in "For King and Country", Helen is our POV, Helen is our standard for how we should behave in relation to them in this, and...it is not good. I don't know who dropped the ball here, I know they were doing it for money, money they probably NEED (and needing money is not a sin, you need money for food and rent), and it's not like they are getting money to kidnap someone - they are getting money to PROTECT John (and they don't know he's Jack the Ripper). They could have easily added in some lines about how some people are coming to kill John, that's why they try to shoot Helen, they were surprised that they were actually friends. Plus, I'll like someone to remark that guns are expensive, Helen recognizing that the group, which includes a young girl or a very young lady, could use that for self-defense, and say they can come back for the guns later, small things you know?*
- Kate Freelander, human trafficker.
- Amy Saunders, cold blooded reporter.
Gray Zone: Sylvio Rudd
Sympathetic (and all of these are one-shot characters):
- Danny Bradley
- Kayla Bradley
- Tashi
- Meg
- Ark-Fong Li
?????
- The Russian Family in the opener: they were white but they were painted as The Foreigners, I don't think they were that sympathetic though, again, could one of them have checked up on the boy afterwards? They did adopt him after all, and it's not unreasonable that they would be frightened of someone who can kill.
- Nikola Tesla, IRL, the guy is Serbian, Slavic, but he's played by the extremely white Jonathan Young, who does a great job, but still...k
*(ETA: Okay, the girl did say, "Baldy guy paid us to protect him", at which point she stopped making stereotypical faces...but I don't remember this part. Geez, the face the girl made when Helen told her the address wasn't good enough, that was something straight out of caricature comics...is that director's fault or the actress or is there some cross culture misunderstanding I'm mired in here? [For me, I tend to read smiling and nodding as insincere rather than friendly, I know it's fucked up, but instinctively, yeah...seeing as how I grew up like a mutt and I was born in the city of mutts (HK), blood aside (though there is no such thing as a pure blooded hound, I just don't know who to blame my smiling + nodding = insincere on. I'm probably making a mess of things trying to talk about this in words when there a million subtle things, like, when smiling + looking directly at someone = predatory/challenge to fight fight fight? versus come have a drink with us.)
...smiling = sincere affection WHEN combined with averted eyes PLUS head slightly lowered to the side.
ETA2: Me and E was talking about Kill Bill a long while back, and E said that she didn't like how Beatrix Kiddo seem to believe that she deserves a happy ending. Well, I liked Beatrix Kiddo, I could like her, because she didn't unfairly think that she deserves a happy ending. In the words of Budd, they deserve to die for what they did to Beatrix, but Beatrix deserves to die too. After Beatrix killed Vernita Green, she said to the younger Green, that if she still feel sore about this when she grows up, she can look Beatrix up for revenge. (Thus, continuing the cycle...I think a lot of the subtext in the Beatrix and Oren fight was Oren's understanding that Beatrix has a right to fight her to settle things...since, that's how Oren started on her path to Crime Boss after all, avenging her own parents, thus her death is full circle in that way...). Kate being the Karma Houdini is why a lot of people hate her, but at the same time, some people still like her, because she is after all, charming.
My problem with Kate's acceptance into Team S, and me struggling with why I could like Jack the Ripper but not forgive Kate's kidnapping and selling of Martin Wood:
I watched the episodes out of order, I watched clips out of order. Now, Helen Magnus, or rather the unreasonable hotness of Helene Magnus, is why I keep watching, but I tuned in for Vampire Nikola Tesla, so I have actually watched clips of his scenes before the whole episodes before.
I think I saw the clips of the Helen tied up scene in "Sleepers", and when Kate started swearing at Nikola, I like her.
The problem with Kate goes back to her introduction in "Revelations", she was involved in the first place because she did business with Cabal, she kidnapped and then sold Martin Wood into enslavement by the Cabal. Martin Wood was a poor orphan who was so disenfranchised, he was experimented on as a child in Project Montana before Magnus pulled the plug on it. Eventually life for Martin Wood ended when Team Sanctuary had to kill him before he could kill them.
I've seen everything from the series opener up to Eulogy, where, having known her for less than a week, and having found her after she kidnapped and sold someone, she seem accepted as a part of the team already, and I don't get it.
...I find myself struggling to like her, and I know I'm not the only one: Kate is very very charming, that's probably how she got into Martin Wood's house. It's not just me, and I have to wonder how fair it is, that Jack the Ripper and vampire Nikola Tesla are relatively undisputed fan favourites. Here's the thing though, neither Jack nor Nikola was accepted in show. Whenever they do something bad, Helen can say she's not surprised, whereas ever little things they do is pleasant surprises.
Jack the Ripper murdered a lot of women, women in disfranchised circumstances. We know he's a bad guy, we can still feel sympathy for him when he lost his daughter and the fact that the woman he's in love with won't be with him, but we don't argue (at least most of us don't) that there isn't a reason why Helen isn't with him: the women he murdered. I like John the same way I like Methos (Highlanders), they are charming charming men not wholly without sympathy, but just like how I won't begrudge ANYTHING Cassandra does to Methos (she has right of grievance since Methos kidnapped and raped her thousands of years ago), if a sex worker were to turn John into a canoe, I won't say anything stupid like, "but he doesn't deserve that!", even though I do like him. I know where he is on the scale.
Kate on the other hand, she's harder to like even though she's very charming, because she had been accepted onto the Good Guys Side. We are judging her with different standards. We judge characters like John and Nikola with the Anti-Villain scale (which tend to be forgiving for any crime up to killing children or committing rape, although even then there are Extreme fans who would actually say things like, "Cassandra is totally overreacting"). Kate has been accepted among the good guys, and we judge her by those standards.
I'll just, like to see the whole, Martin Wood thing addressed. Right now, she totally reads as a Faith Lehane type character (and I liked Faith a lot), but without her Faith Lehane issues addressed: that being Martin Wood. Kate is young, I'll like to see her slowly grow into awareness of the things she does, did, and what it means.
Now, in addition to the Sorting Algorithm of Moralities, there is the issue of how the actions of the characters have been presented, AND gender bias.
The Cabal agents that Nikola killed in The Five are nameless, or if they are named, I forgot them, they were bodies on a field. The sex workers that John murdered, outside of the canon five, were also nameless. I give great credit to the actress who portrayed the woman we saw murdered on screen in the first episode, but over all, it was a case of Disposable Sex Worker. This was modern times in a local place, we NEVER do hear of her again do we? Not even a missing poster?
Martin Wood on the other hand, we didn't see the man on screen pre-mind rape, but we have a name, we knew he was an orphan (hearstring tugging), we saw his home, something that gives gives reality to the character.
Finally, I want to address the issue of colour, or race. I have remarked repeatedly before, that for a show set in Canada, we sure do have a monochrome cast, and all the Unfortunate Implications that carries, especially in "Kush". The first Sanctuary regular (someone who has regular contact with Sanctuary, and is a potential for being a series regular), was Sylvio Rudd. I remember when he was shot in the first or second episode, I was thinking "here we go again, black guy dies first!". He didn't, he survive to die second in "Kush", his second appearance. On first appearance, we are presented with someone who wasn't that trustworthy, someone who was thinking about selling to others, someone who has been known to give bad tips and worry about his cheque in the middle of a everyone is dying crisis.
Then there is the family with the othered person abnormal that opened the series, the Russian family who don't speak English well (Alien Detected!), aka the Shifty Foreigners Hiding Something. I don't think I've said it before, because I didn't know how to word it then, but watching it, I did get a great sense of Othering, that the Russian family in question are less than persons, more like plot devices. It didn't have to be this way. The Empathis from Mumbai in "Haunted" didn't speak English, but TPTB gave them a voice with subtitles. I think the series opener could have been greatly improved if a member of the adopted boy's foster family had checked up on the boy or something.
So far, so not good, so not good, so the addition of Kate is TPTB trying, they were probably trying for 'like Clara, except coloured', but dudes, kidnapping =/= stealing, her characterization and how people reacted to her so far, seem to be, "Clara, more confrontational", so really, it would be much easier to just pretend "Martin Wood never happened", but it did, and this is something that the show has better addressed (unless they did already?). In "Eulogy", Kate was so soft she didn't even take the horn after the baby made a baby face, and in her intro, you could see her sympathizing when she found out that Helen was looking for Ashley, SO, surmising from that - Kate only does what she did for Cabal when provided with plausible deniability. She didn't know who Martin Wood was or what they were going to do to him.
...but she still did it, and they have to address it.
...but, great gods of gazzillion hornets, if Kate ever gets confronted about her past shadiness, I don't want to see it be from Helen for obvious Unfortunate Implications and Jack the Ripper. I think Helen's crime is less because she didn't deliver Jack's victims and she was in love, but I think Helen is somewhat culpable that the most she did to curb the teleporting serial killer (that at the very least, she knows gained telportablity from her experiment), was NOT extend his life again.
ETA: Oh, now adding in "Instinct", Unsympathetic Coloured Characters definitely greatly outnumbered the good ones.
Unsympathetic:
- Leader of the Cabal squad (and may I say it was most Unfortunate Implications, that in the episode where Cabal was introduced, "Fata Morgana", you have a squad lead by a black guy taking back their white women property? What the hell?)
- Nameless smirking Shifty Foreigners that John hired in "For King and Country", Helen is our POV, Helen is our standard for how we should behave in relation to them in this, and...it is not good. I don't know who dropped the ball here, I know they were doing it for money, money they probably NEED (and needing money is not a sin, you need money for food and rent), and it's not like they are getting money to kidnap someone - they are getting money to PROTECT John (and they don't know he's Jack the Ripper). They could have easily added in some lines about how some people are coming to kill John, that's why they try to shoot Helen, they were surprised that they were actually friends. Plus, I'll like someone to remark that guns are expensive, Helen recognizing that the group, which includes a young girl or a very young lady, could use that for self-defense, and say they can come back for the guns later, small things you know?*
- Kate Freelander, human trafficker.
- Amy Saunders, cold blooded reporter.
Gray Zone: Sylvio Rudd
Sympathetic (and all of these are one-shot characters):
- Danny Bradley
- Kayla Bradley
- Tashi
- Meg
- Ark-Fong Li
?????
- The Russian Family in the opener: they were white but they were painted as The Foreigners, I don't think they were that sympathetic though, again, could one of them have checked up on the boy afterwards? They did adopt him after all, and it's not unreasonable that they would be frightened of someone who can kill.
- Nikola Tesla, IRL, the guy is Serbian, Slavic, but he's played by the extremely white Jonathan Young, who does a great job, but still...k
*(ETA: Okay, the girl did say, "Baldy guy paid us to protect him", at which point she stopped making stereotypical faces...but I don't remember this part. Geez, the face the girl made when Helen told her the address wasn't good enough, that was something straight out of caricature comics...is that director's fault or the actress or is there some cross culture misunderstanding I'm mired in here? [For me, I tend to read smiling and nodding as insincere rather than friendly, I know it's fucked up, but instinctively, yeah...seeing as how I grew up like a mutt and I was born in the city of mutts (HK), blood aside (though there is no such thing as a pure blooded hound, I just don't know who to blame my smiling + nodding = insincere on. I'm probably making a mess of things trying to talk about this in words when there a million subtle things, like, when smiling + looking directly at someone = predatory/challenge to fight fight fight? versus come have a drink with us.)
...smiling = sincere affection WHEN combined with averted eyes PLUS head slightly lowered to the side.
ETA2: Me and E was talking about Kill Bill a long while back, and E said that she didn't like how Beatrix Kiddo seem to believe that she deserves a happy ending. Well, I liked Beatrix Kiddo, I could like her, because she didn't unfairly think that she deserves a happy ending. In the words of Budd, they deserve to die for what they did to Beatrix, but Beatrix deserves to die too. After Beatrix killed Vernita Green, she said to the younger Green, that if she still feel sore about this when she grows up, she can look Beatrix up for revenge. (Thus, continuing the cycle...I think a lot of the subtext in the Beatrix and Oren fight was Oren's understanding that Beatrix has a right to fight her to settle things...since, that's how Oren started on her path to Crime Boss after all, avenging her own parents, thus her death is full circle in that way...). Kate being the Karma Houdini is why a lot of people hate her, but at the same time, some people still like her, because she is after all, charming.