Belated posting RH thoughts
So I guess I never actually posted the rest of my Robin Hood thoughts from my rewatch, I had a lot of s3 thoughts that I wrote about and finally here they are for you. As for writing...well I’m not really writing what I intended to write, but this was very effective at giving me Robin Hood (more accurately Guy and Guy/Marian) muses.
Also something I hadn’t thought when I wrote this up but have since, J’onn on Supergirl is Tuck, how did it take me so long to realize that, he’s a got a really distinctive voice? It was the voice that eventually made me realize it; I was thinking a few days back (long after finishing my RH watch and in a lull of Supergirl catching up) that I was having a surprisingly easy time hearing Tuck’s voice in a scene I was considering (never actually wrote it) and couldn’t figure out why until I realized it had very little to do with Tuck. Anyway, J’onn is much better than Tuck who spoiler I am not real nice to in this.
Rest of Robin Hood (mostly s3 focused) thoughts
So I don’t think I’d ever done a full s3 rewatch, in fact I’m not sure I ever went back to it after the show ended. I suspect while working of FT originally I watched parts of it and I know I watched Bad Blood more times than any sane person ever should since I actually did have to write stuff about that episode. But I think a lot of my opinions on the season remain similar to what they were at the time.
Let’s break down the characters.
Kate is worse than I remember. I think at the time I was trying very hard not to dislike her and in the years since I’ve mostly written her out of my memory. And then there was Anna on Downton so my memory of Kate was softened by that too. My attitude became, ‘so what if she was a nothing character, I didn’t really need to care.’ But this time, gloves are off bitch and she is terrible. The braid was stupid but her wild hair wasn’t much better. Her crush on Robin is handled terribly and left pretty much unresolved since she has this big plot in 3x12 about how much she totally loves him and in 3x13 he’s like “...um, whatever dying now. I love Marian, and Much, and John, and being beloved by the people and kind of Archer and I kind of liked Guy by the end, I’m indifferent to you Kate.” The writing is terrible and the acting pretty bad; and 3x09 is getting its own rant when we get to specific events, but they had the gall to say Kate was compassionate after her behavior in that episode and I wanted to punch her.
Tuck is just about as bad as I remember. In some ways having someone with a different agenda isn’t the worst thing, but this guy looks at all of Robin’s flaws and just tells him “No, you see, that’s a good thing.” Not something for him to learn and grow from, but already a good thing. He doesn’t see people as people, just props to build Robin up so that the public and Robin can feed on each other’s love in some sort of endless loop. I think the actor is at least trying, but it’s a terrible character.
Archer...look I don’t hate Archer, but I wish he hadn’t been created. At the time a lot of us suspected that he was introduced so that they could keep the show going without Robin, and now that we know that didn’t happen it seems like the last few episodes could have been used better. It also would have kept them from needing to create this ridiculous backstory that for some reason no one ever spoke of before. Yes it was also a means to an end to get Guy and Robin on the same side, but I think there were better stories to tell than Archer. And yet I don’t hate him; I don’t particularly like him but it would almost be simpler if I hated him more.
Vasey...the actor seems kind of checked out this season, especially in the finale. And yet if I’m going to force an in character logic on it, I kind of can. He’s floundering in the first part of the season, and then his role is so different in events of the finale that we don’t see him work the same. His relationship with Guy is one of the few elements that more or less sticks, and I suspect it’s because the actors were bringing a lot to it. All the fun has gone out of him and Robin, especially in the finale, it’s just about pain now; since his relationship with Guy was basically always just about pain it’s just a little bit angrier now.
Allan gets absolutely nothing to do in s3. Even his subtly advanced friendship with Much and what occasional moments he gets are really about other people. It’s almost like he decided that the last time he had a character arc it was about betraying people so he’s just not going to have a character arc anymore. I will never not want him to speak up for Guy at least a little, and his death is pointless in the grand scheme of things.
Little John, in some ways, fairs a bit better than Allan in that he gets some focus in s3, but he’s also wrong about basically everything (whether or not the show agrees with that assessment). It’s not like a character arc of him learning to have a broader mind about who to trust and who not to, he’s just wrong all the time (hard to make it a character arc when I’m not sure the show realizes how wrong he is about things).
Prince John is a great character but I find myself more disturbed by him than I remember being back in the day, mostly for reasons I’ll discuss as some general thoughts. I liked having him around, but I’m less comfortable with that fact than I used to be.
Robin...well, he’s Robin. On marathon he doesn’t seem to forget about Marian quite as much as I thought at the time (also she’s not around for him to treat badly so I have less reason to object to him on that front); but his treatment of Guy on the subject is all the weirder. As usual with Robin I judge him a lot by his treatment of Much which is...spotty. Add to it this season that I judge him a lot by his relationships with the Gisbornes which are on balance...not so well handled. I have a lot of thoughts on him and Isabella, and I might have even been okay with Robin having a bad-idea girlfriend if that was the biggest complaint about it, if not for the way he treated her in 3x09 (again, rant coming). He’s just so lacking in compassion for either of the Gisbornes; and yes with Guy it’s earned with everything Guy has done but even hating him in some ways requires understanding if not compassion that in fact letting him live at this point is the worse punishment for him. And Isabella was all the more deserving of compassion. And Much deserves the most of all. (I swear this thought made sense in my head, but the words don’t appear to line up)
Much, oh Much. Out of all the characters I love, Much is the one who most deserves all the hugs. He is a better man than all of them and he always was. He deserves so much better than Kate and even she doesn’t see that he’s too good for her. Besides, his real love is always and remains Robin, and then Robin is gone and maybe the rest of them can live with that but I don’t think Much can and I’m pissed at the rest of them for the way they treat him at the end; yes if I take a step back I get that the writers felt they needed to get all the team in a ‘the adventure continues’ place for the end, but it feels like Much is being bullied into it and I hate Much being bullied.
Okay, so it seems I’ve been handling things in more or less their order of importance to me, bringing us to Guy and Isabella, a/k/a the reason to watch season 3. I’m not even sure at the moment which is more important to me, Guy is forever my favorite, my big beautiful broken baby; but Izzy, I just have so many feelings about. Especially since a lot of the thoughts on both of them will end up in specific thoughts.
Isabella’s story could have been better handled, most of it in the moment makes sense, and it largely hangs together as a story, but how one thigs leads to the next isn’t always so well set up. I’ll never blame Guy the way she does, but I understand why she does; and it’s not as if she only blames him but not the people who actually hurt her, so it isn’t misguided blame; she’s just this odd character stuck between being vaguely historically accurate and being on RH. I don’t blame either Guy or Isabella for not having a ton of compassion for each other, they’re both so damaged and largely lacking in compassion (and not pretending they have it) and have both lived in hell for the better part of two decades that extending compassion to the other seems like a completely alien concept/
Guy...just Guy. Even when he’s undeniably terrible I just get so full of feelings at the thought of Guy. The terrible things is that killing Marian wasn’t even his low point, though it is the event that opened him up to a whole new level to fall to that he didn’t even want to climb back from for most of the season. He never so much chose to be on a redemption arc, but he eventually fell so low that he let himself get sucked into it. He spends so much of particularly the early season drunk, exhausted, and insane that he has to clear his head in the dungeon for a while to shake him loose. Much as it hurts me, death was the necessary end at this point. He was never really sane again, if he ever had been, and he was to broken to go on much longer and death was a release for him. But I still feel sad.
A few general observations about this season
Religion takes on a much larger role in this season. We get ranking church people, we go to the abbey, we have moments that take place in chapels or churches. It’s probably why FT has the religious edge it does since I was writing it with s3 most fresh in my mind.
It is also the most rapey by far. There’s some vaguely sexual harassment or kind of assaulty vibes in s1&2, largely from Guy though also Vasey, but there never seemed like any real threat of rape (arguably Guy’s ‘have her by force’ thing in the s2 finale - which is not a good comment by any means - but it mostly seemed to come out of nowhere and while not OOC not exactly in character either). Even say the thing with Winchester, while if one thinks about it was pretty rapey, didn’t feel as close to the surface as so much of s3. This season however, Isabella’s story is all about her being possessed by men, Kate is more than once implied to be under threat of rape; and I’m pretty sure PJ raped Guy while they were hanging out in London. Did the writers go and read ASOIAF before this season and then remember it was a family show but still left some of the rapiness in?
I can’t quite seem to make up my mind who I think had it worse between Guy and Isabella in terms of life paths. As a woman I have a visceral reaction to what Isabella went through, but she seems less broken than Guy does by this point. And while I don’t think Vasey ever sexually abused Guy the way I’m sure Thornton did Isabella, there was a sexual edge to it that I don’t completely want to ignore, especially when combined with all the other abuse he definitely took from Vasey. So let’s just say they both had crap lives and I think they both deserve lots of non-creepy hugs.
I still don’t really understand what the point of giving Robin not one but two love interests this season was. I guess it’s tied in with Kate being so terrible. Like I said, him having a bad-idea girlfriend as part of his grieving process might have played alright, and as a story it would sort of feel unfinished if he didn’t fall leave it behind for a good” relationship; but it just comes off as horndog because Marian is barely mentioned and it’s not just having a sexy bad idea flirtation with the dark side. But not only does he have multiple love interests when he should have been grieving, but he picks the wrong one to pursue something with.
I had somehow forgotten about the Guy’s locks of grief/guilt/crazy, or at least my thoughts on the subject. Which I have rediscovered is: while not as good as his s2 hair I still rather like the look on him.
Most of the episodes I wants to do thoughts on were later in the season, by which point I had sort of committed to not doing it, plus I still would have just been bitching about Robin or picking apart Gisborne family drama, and doing it this way it’ll mostly just be the latter.
-The first few episodes with Isabella, Robin’s rational for trusting her seems to subtextually be “But she’s hot.” I ship Robin/Isabella (my second choice Robin ship), and I really wish he treated her better later, but he seems ready to trust her pretty quickly without good reason besides her being hot.
-I don’t think I realized it before, but Isabella’s breaking point in 3x07 is basically exactly Guy’s. Take one emotionally, psychologically, and physically abused person who has no real concept of how to connect with people; add one person who is vaguely nice and gentle with them; let the first person build up a fantasy relationship based on the scraps of affection offered by the second person but it means the world to person 1; then have person 2 tell person 1 that it’s never going to happen and there’s no future for them. That this ends badly should maybe not be a surprise, especially as viewers when we already saw it end badly once.
And yes, contrary to what Robin says, Guy had at least scraps to build that fantasy on. If nothing else they were engaged at one point. He’s probably right that on balance Guy shouldn’t have thought it would end well for him, but again, almost two decades of abuse does not a healthy understanding of relationships create. And if someone had brought that up as a reason Robin shouldn’t be messing around with Isabella that would have been pretty smart.
-Look, we have to talk about 3x09, because this episode still destroys me, and Guy is only the third reason. Isabella, Much, then Guy, then I suppose Meg. Part of why Isabella’s story hurts so much, is that no one in text seems to understand that it does. Guy at least has Meg taking his side even though she barely understands anything that’s really going on. But Isabella ends up condemned in what should be her most sympathetic story. It’s absolutely understandable that she kills Thornton in the end, I imagine her only feeling is that she wishes she’d done it a decade or more ago (her feeling once it’s done, she’s terrified leading up to it because he’s the worst); and having had to deal with Thornton she’s completely justified in rejecting another man who wants to be in control of her. And yet Robin and especially Kate react like she’s a horrible person somehow and I don’t understand how they make that leap in logic. Guy hates her ass after everything she has recently done to him personally, not exactly great big-brothering, but I get why he isn’t particularly compassionate, but the “heroes” should display some iota of compassion for this poor woman and they don’t and I hate them for it.
And Much...I just don’t believe there is a power on Earth that could drive him from Robin’s side except Kate’s awfulness. I don’t think it’s heartbreak that Kate rejects him exactly, because Much’s love for Robin is greater than anything, except perhaps his capacity to be hurt by Robin and Kate makes it sound like Robin needs Much out of the way to be happy. And the way she does it is so uncaring and cruel that it breaks him. He could swallow being second to Marian in Robin’s heart, but this is too far; so he would leave Robin behind and I needed that to be resolved but it wasn’t.
On reflection, I don’t think Guy had any particular feeling for Meg. She liked him (she thinks men are stupid but she has a crush on that lunk of a man? And I have to dock her wisdom a bit more because hygienic or not, he looks damn good, and it’s the middle ages, none of you are hygienic) but most of his interactions with her seem very innocent and treating her like she’s very young (he had actually played her father figure in Sparkhouse before this). But that’s probably for the best; he came to care about her and it still hurts that she dies, but I don’t think it would have made sense for him to have deep feelings for her in the time they had.
What she did was externalize his struggle at the moment, and she made him care about...anything again; both of which were things he needed but it still hurts because there was no way this didn’t end in pain. And so it’s probably also better for him that he didn’t love her, that would have just ended worse.
-3x10 remains ridiculous. “Our past was never a secret” except from the audience. Also that might have been a fine time to go off and reread FT, since I need to do that, but I opted to finish out the season.
-Looking at my old reactions, the finale broke me at the time, and I can see why. I didn’t quite break me this time, but it came close. Allan’s senseless death, Guy and Isabella’s basically inevitable ones, Robin’s goodbye to the gang especially Much, Much clearly wanting out at the end but being peer pressured back in. I’d forgotten there was anything after Robin’s death, and I almost wish it had ended there because that last scene wrecked the mood for me and made me pissed at the gang’s treatment of Much all over again. Yes he does need them to make it through this, but they’re not saying ‘we need to support each other as family’ or at least it doesn’t come off that way; it feels like they’re telling Much to not mourn the love of his life just because ‘We are Robin Hood.’ Fitting, Robin didn’t really grieve either.
There was one other moment I really liked and almost think I want to do something with I just don’t know what. because we see in this episode that in a battle, Much is the guy you want on your side, and Robin knows that; of course he knows that because they’re been to war together. But I wonder if there wasn’t a moment as Robin was watching Much realizing that in many ways Much has played down his abilities; because of his own pain from the war, because of Robin’s pain from the war, to fit in with the gang as opposed to standing out as an ex-soldier; all that pain and heartbreak that Robin can never make right for his best friend, especially as they had to bring those soldier skills back and now are about to die (though only Robin does - along with a lot of nameless villagers and the poor broken Gisborne siblings, and the bad guys of which Isabella is not one because she was never bad).
I grieve for Guy and to a lesser extent Isabella when they die; I get a little mad about Allan’s death, but what breaks me about the end is Much, it always was and it was always going to be, because of every character on the show, Much least deserves to suffer.
But Guy’s still my favorite; for all he probably does deserve to suffer.
Also something I hadn’t thought when I wrote this up but have since, J’onn on Supergirl is Tuck, how did it take me so long to realize that, he’s a got a really distinctive voice? It was the voice that eventually made me realize it; I was thinking a few days back (long after finishing my RH watch and in a lull of Supergirl catching up) that I was having a surprisingly easy time hearing Tuck’s voice in a scene I was considering (never actually wrote it) and couldn’t figure out why until I realized it had very little to do with Tuck. Anyway, J’onn is much better than Tuck who spoiler I am not real nice to in this.
Rest of Robin Hood (mostly s3 focused) thoughts
So I don’t think I’d ever done a full s3 rewatch, in fact I’m not sure I ever went back to it after the show ended. I suspect while working of FT originally I watched parts of it and I know I watched Bad Blood more times than any sane person ever should since I actually did have to write stuff about that episode. But I think a lot of my opinions on the season remain similar to what they were at the time.
Let’s break down the characters.
Kate is worse than I remember. I think at the time I was trying very hard not to dislike her and in the years since I’ve mostly written her out of my memory. And then there was Anna on Downton so my memory of Kate was softened by that too. My attitude became, ‘so what if she was a nothing character, I didn’t really need to care.’ But this time, gloves are off bitch and she is terrible. The braid was stupid but her wild hair wasn’t much better. Her crush on Robin is handled terribly and left pretty much unresolved since she has this big plot in 3x12 about how much she totally loves him and in 3x13 he’s like “...um, whatever dying now. I love Marian, and Much, and John, and being beloved by the people and kind of Archer and I kind of liked Guy by the end, I’m indifferent to you Kate.” The writing is terrible and the acting pretty bad; and 3x09 is getting its own rant when we get to specific events, but they had the gall to say Kate was compassionate after her behavior in that episode and I wanted to punch her.
Tuck is just about as bad as I remember. In some ways having someone with a different agenda isn’t the worst thing, but this guy looks at all of Robin’s flaws and just tells him “No, you see, that’s a good thing.” Not something for him to learn and grow from, but already a good thing. He doesn’t see people as people, just props to build Robin up so that the public and Robin can feed on each other’s love in some sort of endless loop. I think the actor is at least trying, but it’s a terrible character.
Archer...look I don’t hate Archer, but I wish he hadn’t been created. At the time a lot of us suspected that he was introduced so that they could keep the show going without Robin, and now that we know that didn’t happen it seems like the last few episodes could have been used better. It also would have kept them from needing to create this ridiculous backstory that for some reason no one ever spoke of before. Yes it was also a means to an end to get Guy and Robin on the same side, but I think there were better stories to tell than Archer. And yet I don’t hate him; I don’t particularly like him but it would almost be simpler if I hated him more.
Vasey...the actor seems kind of checked out this season, especially in the finale. And yet if I’m going to force an in character logic on it, I kind of can. He’s floundering in the first part of the season, and then his role is so different in events of the finale that we don’t see him work the same. His relationship with Guy is one of the few elements that more or less sticks, and I suspect it’s because the actors were bringing a lot to it. All the fun has gone out of him and Robin, especially in the finale, it’s just about pain now; since his relationship with Guy was basically always just about pain it’s just a little bit angrier now.
Allan gets absolutely nothing to do in s3. Even his subtly advanced friendship with Much and what occasional moments he gets are really about other people. It’s almost like he decided that the last time he had a character arc it was about betraying people so he’s just not going to have a character arc anymore. I will never not want him to speak up for Guy at least a little, and his death is pointless in the grand scheme of things.
Little John, in some ways, fairs a bit better than Allan in that he gets some focus in s3, but he’s also wrong about basically everything (whether or not the show agrees with that assessment). It’s not like a character arc of him learning to have a broader mind about who to trust and who not to, he’s just wrong all the time (hard to make it a character arc when I’m not sure the show realizes how wrong he is about things).
Prince John is a great character but I find myself more disturbed by him than I remember being back in the day, mostly for reasons I’ll discuss as some general thoughts. I liked having him around, but I’m less comfortable with that fact than I used to be.
Robin...well, he’s Robin. On marathon he doesn’t seem to forget about Marian quite as much as I thought at the time (also she’s not around for him to treat badly so I have less reason to object to him on that front); but his treatment of Guy on the subject is all the weirder. As usual with Robin I judge him a lot by his treatment of Much which is...spotty. Add to it this season that I judge him a lot by his relationships with the Gisbornes which are on balance...not so well handled. I have a lot of thoughts on him and Isabella, and I might have even been okay with Robin having a bad-idea girlfriend if that was the biggest complaint about it, if not for the way he treated her in 3x09 (again, rant coming). He’s just so lacking in compassion for either of the Gisbornes; and yes with Guy it’s earned with everything Guy has done but even hating him in some ways requires understanding if not compassion that in fact letting him live at this point is the worse punishment for him. And Isabella was all the more deserving of compassion. And Much deserves the most of all. (I swear this thought made sense in my head, but the words don’t appear to line up)
Much, oh Much. Out of all the characters I love, Much is the one who most deserves all the hugs. He is a better man than all of them and he always was. He deserves so much better than Kate and even she doesn’t see that he’s too good for her. Besides, his real love is always and remains Robin, and then Robin is gone and maybe the rest of them can live with that but I don’t think Much can and I’m pissed at the rest of them for the way they treat him at the end; yes if I take a step back I get that the writers felt they needed to get all the team in a ‘the adventure continues’ place for the end, but it feels like Much is being bullied into it and I hate Much being bullied.
Okay, so it seems I’ve been handling things in more or less their order of importance to me, bringing us to Guy and Isabella, a/k/a the reason to watch season 3. I’m not even sure at the moment which is more important to me, Guy is forever my favorite, my big beautiful broken baby; but Izzy, I just have so many feelings about. Especially since a lot of the thoughts on both of them will end up in specific thoughts.
Isabella’s story could have been better handled, most of it in the moment makes sense, and it largely hangs together as a story, but how one thigs leads to the next isn’t always so well set up. I’ll never blame Guy the way she does, but I understand why she does; and it’s not as if she only blames him but not the people who actually hurt her, so it isn’t misguided blame; she’s just this odd character stuck between being vaguely historically accurate and being on RH. I don’t blame either Guy or Isabella for not having a ton of compassion for each other, they’re both so damaged and largely lacking in compassion (and not pretending they have it) and have both lived in hell for the better part of two decades that extending compassion to the other seems like a completely alien concept/
Guy...just Guy. Even when he’s undeniably terrible I just get so full of feelings at the thought of Guy. The terrible things is that killing Marian wasn’t even his low point, though it is the event that opened him up to a whole new level to fall to that he didn’t even want to climb back from for most of the season. He never so much chose to be on a redemption arc, but he eventually fell so low that he let himself get sucked into it. He spends so much of particularly the early season drunk, exhausted, and insane that he has to clear his head in the dungeon for a while to shake him loose. Much as it hurts me, death was the necessary end at this point. He was never really sane again, if he ever had been, and he was to broken to go on much longer and death was a release for him. But I still feel sad.
A few general observations about this season
Religion takes on a much larger role in this season. We get ranking church people, we go to the abbey, we have moments that take place in chapels or churches. It’s probably why FT has the religious edge it does since I was writing it with s3 most fresh in my mind.
It is also the most rapey by far. There’s some vaguely sexual harassment or kind of assaulty vibes in s1&2, largely from Guy though also Vasey, but there never seemed like any real threat of rape (arguably Guy’s ‘have her by force’ thing in the s2 finale - which is not a good comment by any means - but it mostly seemed to come out of nowhere and while not OOC not exactly in character either). Even say the thing with Winchester, while if one thinks about it was pretty rapey, didn’t feel as close to the surface as so much of s3. This season however, Isabella’s story is all about her being possessed by men, Kate is more than once implied to be under threat of rape; and I’m pretty sure PJ raped Guy while they were hanging out in London. Did the writers go and read ASOIAF before this season and then remember it was a family show but still left some of the rapiness in?
I can’t quite seem to make up my mind who I think had it worse between Guy and Isabella in terms of life paths. As a woman I have a visceral reaction to what Isabella went through, but she seems less broken than Guy does by this point. And while I don’t think Vasey ever sexually abused Guy the way I’m sure Thornton did Isabella, there was a sexual edge to it that I don’t completely want to ignore, especially when combined with all the other abuse he definitely took from Vasey. So let’s just say they both had crap lives and I think they both deserve lots of non-creepy hugs.
I still don’t really understand what the point of giving Robin not one but two love interests this season was. I guess it’s tied in with Kate being so terrible. Like I said, him having a bad-idea girlfriend as part of his grieving process might have played alright, and as a story it would sort of feel unfinished if he didn’t fall leave it behind for a good” relationship; but it just comes off as horndog because Marian is barely mentioned and it’s not just having a sexy bad idea flirtation with the dark side. But not only does he have multiple love interests when he should have been grieving, but he picks the wrong one to pursue something with.
I had somehow forgotten about the Guy’s locks of grief/guilt/crazy, or at least my thoughts on the subject. Which I have rediscovered is: while not as good as his s2 hair I still rather like the look on him.
Most of the episodes I wants to do thoughts on were later in the season, by which point I had sort of committed to not doing it, plus I still would have just been bitching about Robin or picking apart Gisborne family drama, and doing it this way it’ll mostly just be the latter.
-The first few episodes with Isabella, Robin’s rational for trusting her seems to subtextually be “But she’s hot.” I ship Robin/Isabella (my second choice Robin ship), and I really wish he treated her better later, but he seems ready to trust her pretty quickly without good reason besides her being hot.
-I don’t think I realized it before, but Isabella’s breaking point in 3x07 is basically exactly Guy’s. Take one emotionally, psychologically, and physically abused person who has no real concept of how to connect with people; add one person who is vaguely nice and gentle with them; let the first person build up a fantasy relationship based on the scraps of affection offered by the second person but it means the world to person 1; then have person 2 tell person 1 that it’s never going to happen and there’s no future for them. That this ends badly should maybe not be a surprise, especially as viewers when we already saw it end badly once.
And yes, contrary to what Robin says, Guy had at least scraps to build that fantasy on. If nothing else they were engaged at one point. He’s probably right that on balance Guy shouldn’t have thought it would end well for him, but again, almost two decades of abuse does not a healthy understanding of relationships create. And if someone had brought that up as a reason Robin shouldn’t be messing around with Isabella that would have been pretty smart.
-Look, we have to talk about 3x09, because this episode still destroys me, and Guy is only the third reason. Isabella, Much, then Guy, then I suppose Meg. Part of why Isabella’s story hurts so much, is that no one in text seems to understand that it does. Guy at least has Meg taking his side even though she barely understands anything that’s really going on. But Isabella ends up condemned in what should be her most sympathetic story. It’s absolutely understandable that she kills Thornton in the end, I imagine her only feeling is that she wishes she’d done it a decade or more ago (her feeling once it’s done, she’s terrified leading up to it because he’s the worst); and having had to deal with Thornton she’s completely justified in rejecting another man who wants to be in control of her. And yet Robin and especially Kate react like she’s a horrible person somehow and I don’t understand how they make that leap in logic. Guy hates her ass after everything she has recently done to him personally, not exactly great big-brothering, but I get why he isn’t particularly compassionate, but the “heroes” should display some iota of compassion for this poor woman and they don’t and I hate them for it.
And Much...I just don’t believe there is a power on Earth that could drive him from Robin’s side except Kate’s awfulness. I don’t think it’s heartbreak that Kate rejects him exactly, because Much’s love for Robin is greater than anything, except perhaps his capacity to be hurt by Robin and Kate makes it sound like Robin needs Much out of the way to be happy. And the way she does it is so uncaring and cruel that it breaks him. He could swallow being second to Marian in Robin’s heart, but this is too far; so he would leave Robin behind and I needed that to be resolved but it wasn’t.
On reflection, I don’t think Guy had any particular feeling for Meg. She liked him (she thinks men are stupid but she has a crush on that lunk of a man? And I have to dock her wisdom a bit more because hygienic or not, he looks damn good, and it’s the middle ages, none of you are hygienic) but most of his interactions with her seem very innocent and treating her like she’s very young (he had actually played her father figure in Sparkhouse before this). But that’s probably for the best; he came to care about her and it still hurts that she dies, but I don’t think it would have made sense for him to have deep feelings for her in the time they had.
What she did was externalize his struggle at the moment, and she made him care about...anything again; both of which were things he needed but it still hurts because there was no way this didn’t end in pain. And so it’s probably also better for him that he didn’t love her, that would have just ended worse.
-3x10 remains ridiculous. “Our past was never a secret” except from the audience. Also that might have been a fine time to go off and reread FT, since I need to do that, but I opted to finish out the season.
-Looking at my old reactions, the finale broke me at the time, and I can see why. I didn’t quite break me this time, but it came close. Allan’s senseless death, Guy and Isabella’s basically inevitable ones, Robin’s goodbye to the gang especially Much, Much clearly wanting out at the end but being peer pressured back in. I’d forgotten there was anything after Robin’s death, and I almost wish it had ended there because that last scene wrecked the mood for me and made me pissed at the gang’s treatment of Much all over again. Yes he does need them to make it through this, but they’re not saying ‘we need to support each other as family’ or at least it doesn’t come off that way; it feels like they’re telling Much to not mourn the love of his life just because ‘We are Robin Hood.’ Fitting, Robin didn’t really grieve either.
There was one other moment I really liked and almost think I want to do something with I just don’t know what. because we see in this episode that in a battle, Much is the guy you want on your side, and Robin knows that; of course he knows that because they’re been to war together. But I wonder if there wasn’t a moment as Robin was watching Much realizing that in many ways Much has played down his abilities; because of his own pain from the war, because of Robin’s pain from the war, to fit in with the gang as opposed to standing out as an ex-soldier; all that pain and heartbreak that Robin can never make right for his best friend, especially as they had to bring those soldier skills back and now are about to die (though only Robin does - along with a lot of nameless villagers and the poor broken Gisborne siblings, and the bad guys of which Isabella is not one because she was never bad).
I grieve for Guy and to a lesser extent Isabella when they die; I get a little mad about Allan’s death, but what breaks me about the end is Much, it always was and it was always going to be, because of every character on the show, Much least deserves to suffer.
But Guy’s still my favorite; for all he probably does deserve to suffer.