I've seen seasons come and go
Oh GOD I am useless. I'm so useless I've actually set myself an alarm to come and post here every week (or comment on fic if I really have nothing to say). I hope you are all ok!
ANYWAY! First post of the new regime, lol. The weather has turned, going from surprisingly mild to OMG LAYERS, so that's a pain. More of a pain was the storm the other night which blew over one of the pots I have outside of my front door, which is worrying as they've got rocks in the bottom. Oh well, tree seems to have survived, though a lot of stuff went over that night and a bunch of things ended up hitting my windows (mostly paper/plastic).
Recently I have been crocheting a lot to get Christmas presents done (and will be doing that again once I post this), I did Open House (pictures here: metropolithan.blogspot.co.uk/), I've been to Brussels with Lesley (there will eventually be photos of this but I am slow) and I have been doing a lot of tech support for my parents. I have recently accepted that this is basically my purpose in life now ;)
I'm typing this while listening to Watch What Crappens, which is a podcast about the Real Housewives shows (which I don't watch) and they're attempting to do Cheshire accents and it is completely ridiculous. All their accents are completely ridiculous tbh but hilarious.
I have also been slowly working my way through the stuff saved on my Freesat box and other TV shows, mainly because I want to watch Justified but can't start that until I have less than 50 billion other things to watch. Last weekend I watched Under the Skin, which was very odd (Scarlett Johansson was amazing though) and made my way through a few episodes of River. The last episode was this week, and scattered thoughts are under the cut, mostly taken from an email conversation with
delgaserasca earlier:
So what really struck me throughout the last episode was just how sad it all was. Apart from Ira and his family, everyone’s life was rubbish. River was hallucinating all over the shop (and much as he might think it gives him insights, the hallucinations can’t tell him anything he doesn’t already know which just gave it another layer of sadness for me), Stevie had been raped then had to give up her son then tried to protect him from the creepy bastards/criminal bullshit in her family and then got killed by him so it didn’t matter anyway, and her mother was pretty awful as well. Meanwhile Tom’s utter dickbag behaviour possibly ruins Chrissie’s career and ends up making Chrissie think that somehow she should have been staying home for all those years (which I thought was bullshit, actually) to protect her family. That actor is very good at playing that kind of man though. I think he played the same sort of guy in the very first episode of Lewis (he was a maths professor who killed a student because she had proved some of his work wrong).
Before the series started I did hear an interview on a podcast about the show and showing mental illness in drama and from the tone of that interview (it was with someone from Mind I think, talking about how they want programme makers to consult them) I was expecting something a bit different. Much as I loved the central performances, it was just ‘tortured genius male detective’ all over again. Also I wasn’t entirely buying that River would be able to do things like going into the group and throwing chairs around with no consequences, given that the shrink lady was at his workplace as well.
I wasn’t mad keen on the actual resolution of whodunnit, to be honest. I mean, the story was appropriately depressing for a crime drama (I think this just TV law now, hahahaha lolsob), so thanks for that, but I didn’t quite buy that Frankie would be able to go and do that from a standing start (if he’s been kept away from most of the criminal stuff as they said then ‘go shoot your sister’ is a heck of an opener), and then the whole bit with the restaurant and the dancing was super difficult to watch (and he was lucky there were no cars coming along that road for the whole sequence, haha). It just felt like him giving up and going along with the madness, which I thought was depressing but ok, if that’s where they’re going fine, he can’t bear to live without her so he’s just going to live with the version of her in his head there constantly, and then Ira comes along and gets him dinner and then he’s back at work with Ira’s wife bringing them food (she wasn’t in it much but I did love the two of them), so he didn’t give up after all? I guess maybe they wanted to leave it open for the possibility of a second series?
Overall there were some brilliant performances but the plotting and pacing was not great. I wouldn't mind a second series if there was less focus on River alone and more of an ensemble thing.
(oh, however big plus points for use of the DLR, which I love) This entry was originally posted at http://hestia8.dreamwidth.org/66571.html.
ANYWAY! First post of the new regime, lol. The weather has turned, going from surprisingly mild to OMG LAYERS, so that's a pain. More of a pain was the storm the other night which blew over one of the pots I have outside of my front door, which is worrying as they've got rocks in the bottom. Oh well, tree seems to have survived, though a lot of stuff went over that night and a bunch of things ended up hitting my windows (mostly paper/plastic).
Recently I have been crocheting a lot to get Christmas presents done (and will be doing that again once I post this), I did Open House (pictures here: metropolithan.blogspot.co.uk/), I've been to Brussels with Lesley (there will eventually be photos of this but I am slow) and I have been doing a lot of tech support for my parents. I have recently accepted that this is basically my purpose in life now ;)
I'm typing this while listening to Watch What Crappens, which is a podcast about the Real Housewives shows (which I don't watch) and they're attempting to do Cheshire accents and it is completely ridiculous. All their accents are completely ridiculous tbh but hilarious.
I have also been slowly working my way through the stuff saved on my Freesat box and other TV shows, mainly because I want to watch Justified but can't start that until I have less than 50 billion other things to watch. Last weekend I watched Under the Skin, which was very odd (Scarlett Johansson was amazing though) and made my way through a few episodes of River. The last episode was this week, and scattered thoughts are under the cut, mostly taken from an email conversation with
delgaserasca earlier:
So what really struck me throughout the last episode was just how sad it all was. Apart from Ira and his family, everyone’s life was rubbish. River was hallucinating all over the shop (and much as he might think it gives him insights, the hallucinations can’t tell him anything he doesn’t already know which just gave it another layer of sadness for me), Stevie had been raped then had to give up her son then tried to protect him from the creepy bastards/criminal bullshit in her family and then got killed by him so it didn’t matter anyway, and her mother was pretty awful as well. Meanwhile Tom’s utter dickbag behaviour possibly ruins Chrissie’s career and ends up making Chrissie think that somehow she should have been staying home for all those years (which I thought was bullshit, actually) to protect her family. That actor is very good at playing that kind of man though. I think he played the same sort of guy in the very first episode of Lewis (he was a maths professor who killed a student because she had proved some of his work wrong).
Before the series started I did hear an interview on a podcast about the show and showing mental illness in drama and from the tone of that interview (it was with someone from Mind I think, talking about how they want programme makers to consult them) I was expecting something a bit different. Much as I loved the central performances, it was just ‘tortured genius male detective’ all over again. Also I wasn’t entirely buying that River would be able to do things like going into the group and throwing chairs around with no consequences, given that the shrink lady was at his workplace as well.
I wasn’t mad keen on the actual resolution of whodunnit, to be honest. I mean, the story was appropriately depressing for a crime drama (I think this just TV law now, hahahaha lolsob), so thanks for that, but I didn’t quite buy that Frankie would be able to go and do that from a standing start (if he’s been kept away from most of the criminal stuff as they said then ‘go shoot your sister’ is a heck of an opener), and then the whole bit with the restaurant and the dancing was super difficult to watch (and he was lucky there were no cars coming along that road for the whole sequence, haha). It just felt like him giving up and going along with the madness, which I thought was depressing but ok, if that’s where they’re going fine, he can’t bear to live without her so he’s just going to live with the version of her in his head there constantly, and then Ira comes along and gets him dinner and then he’s back at work with Ira’s wife bringing them food (she wasn’t in it much but I did love the two of them), so he didn’t give up after all? I guess maybe they wanted to leave it open for the possibility of a second series?
Overall there were some brilliant performances but the plotting and pacing was not great. I wouldn't mind a second series if there was less focus on River alone and more of an ensemble thing.
(oh, however big plus points for use of the DLR, which I love) This entry was originally posted at http://hestia8.dreamwidth.org/66571.html.