Major Crimes 3.09
I'm still trying to figure out what I think of this week's Major Crimes. I think it may be summed up as "Improvement on the last few episodes, but my trust in this show is not recovered." I keep using Criminal Minds as the bar - in those terms, it would be 3.20/4.01.
There were two good things about this episode. One is everything they didn't fuck up: no dead children, no using men-on-women violence as a stand-in for gay hate, no overplaying Sykes' relationship. The other is the handling of Rick, and Rick and Sharon. If anything bothers me about Rick, it isn't that he was deeply suspicious of Rusty: that makes sense. It would've been amiss if Rick didn't have at least some resistance to the idea.
What bothers me is that a reasonably intelligent and seemingly reasonably emotionally intelligent young man bought his complete failure of a father's psychologically abusive lines without recognizing them. That little speech? That's psych abuse 101, and I would expect a decent adult person to recognize that shit when they're hearing it from someone they know to be an asshole and a shirker and a manipulator.
I'm also giving the characterization of Fritz in this episode deeply suspicious looks, because that was OOC. I can't even buy his moving to the LAPD - this is the man who wanted Brenda to quit because of what the job was doing to her. So what the hell? And the end of the episode, too: this is the man who locked Brenda out of the bedroom until she stops using interrogation tactics over dinner, this is the man who calmly and consistently called Brenda out of her lying, how about no.
...and I'm also pissed off at the main plot line, actually. Sloppy writing all over that, damnit. The thing that's pissing me off, specifically, is that there was no justification for making that guy a Ranger. You want him to be a long-distance marksman? Fine. No problem. There are other ways to get that qualification, that don't necessarily involve the process of psychological selection and tempering involved in getting through Ranger School, let alone getting into the actual Rangers. (On the list on my hand? "Special Forces" go right next to "teenaged girls" and "non-European derived cultures".)
Yeah, broken trust with a show is bad.
This entry was originally posted at http://hagar-972.dreamwidth.org/2571487.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
There were two good things about this episode. One is everything they didn't fuck up: no dead children, no using men-on-women violence as a stand-in for gay hate, no overplaying Sykes' relationship. The other is the handling of Rick, and Rick and Sharon. If anything bothers me about Rick, it isn't that he was deeply suspicious of Rusty: that makes sense. It would've been amiss if Rick didn't have at least some resistance to the idea.
What bothers me is that a reasonably intelligent and seemingly reasonably emotionally intelligent young man bought his complete failure of a father's psychologically abusive lines without recognizing them. That little speech? That's psych abuse 101, and I would expect a decent adult person to recognize that shit when they're hearing it from someone they know to be an asshole and a shirker and a manipulator.
I'm also giving the characterization of Fritz in this episode deeply suspicious looks, because that was OOC. I can't even buy his moving to the LAPD - this is the man who wanted Brenda to quit because of what the job was doing to her. So what the hell? And the end of the episode, too: this is the man who locked Brenda out of the bedroom until she stops using interrogation tactics over dinner, this is the man who calmly and consistently called Brenda out of her lying, how about no.
...and I'm also pissed off at the main plot line, actually. Sloppy writing all over that, damnit. The thing that's pissing me off, specifically, is that there was no justification for making that guy a Ranger. You want him to be a long-distance marksman? Fine. No problem. There are other ways to get that qualification, that don't necessarily involve the process of psychological selection and tempering involved in getting through Ranger School, let alone getting into the actual Rangers. (On the list on my hand? "Special Forces" go right next to "teenaged girls" and "non-European derived cultures".)
Yeah, broken trust with a show is bad.
This entry was originally posted at http://hagar-972.dreamwidth.org/2571487.html. Please comment there using OpenID.