TV talk, mostly ranting
So, Agent Carter is over, and I can move on to a more reasonable pace of fannishness, including ficcing (which may or may not become an actual story, you know what I'm like).
The question of course arises: What of a second season? And... I don't know. Of course it'd be nice to have more; it's a delightful show, but I'm not sure they can keep up the quality for a second season, and I'd rather have none at all than a subpar one.
I'm also not sure I can handle this fandom for another season. Because dear God are they intense. It's a bit ironic that I should say that, considering how this show ate my brain, but either the rest of fandom is even more intense than I am, or else my frenzy was simply on a different frequency.
It's like, because this is MCU's first story that unambiguously stars a woman (Skye being more of a co-star), it's PERFECT and nothing can be wrong about it. And because Peggy is so front-and-center to it, she too is PERFECT and can never be wrong. Especially since she's the only woman with any relevance to the plot - if there's anything I have against Angie, it's that she only ever services as a moon in orbit of Peggy; all her own ambitions and desires are sidelined. If there IS a season two, I hope that she gets more to do, or else she'll be an example of the tedious superhero girlfriend trope made no better for being attached to a woman.
And I even feel burnt-out on Cartinelli, because the whole ANYTHING LESS THAN COMPLETE WORSHIP IS HOMOPHOBIC angle, while more understandable in femslash (since it's often written by actual lesbian and bi women) is still tiresome as all fuck.
Maybe I'm just getting too old for this shit.
***
Instead of AC, we have Agents of SHIELD back, which I'm now caught up on. Like people have said, it does pick up pace, plotwise, once the HYDRA stuff is set in motion... but I can't help feeling that the problem was never the plot. Yes, they did a bunch of MOTW episodes, but so do a lot of shows, and without feeling so much like they're treading water.
The trouble was the characters, and it still is. I can't quite put my finger on it, if it's in the acting or the writing or the directing, but my level of giving a shit is considerably lower than it should be at this point. It's been a season and a half, and usually I have a favourite long before that point. Here, I have the people I occasionally care about (May, Mack, Fitz & Simmons - they're not really Fitzsimmons any longer, are they?) and the people I don't (anyone else). There are simply too many scenes I watch and go: "This would be so much more affecting if I cared."
In my meaner moments I think that it's because they decided that with Coulson so dull and uncharismatic, they had to make sure that no one else outshone him. My apologies to Coulson fans, but the only time I've ever liked him was in the oneshot, and that one was awesome specifically BECAUSE he's so dull and uncharismatic that his actions served as a counterpoint to that.
Still, I keep watching, for some reason... I guess it is the plot. Though I do feel a bit irked about the plot too, because the way they're selling it as members of HYDRA infiltrating SHIELD and SHIELD itself being good kind of feels like a betrayal of the story told in CATWS. But maybe I was never meant to read it the way I did, which was that the HYDRA type of thinking infiltrated SHIELD to the point where non-HYDRA members of SHIELD started making HYDRA type of decisions. Like a Third Wave sort of thing. To me, the AOS approach is a lot less interesting. So what is it that makes the show so addictive?
***
The complete opposite is Jane the Virgin, where I love the characters and am delighted by every episode, yet am still only up to ep 10. For some reason, I just don't feel the need to watch it very often. Maybe it's just a tad too sweet and only works in small doses, as dessert...
Gosh, I'm negative today, aren't I? This entry was originally posted at http://katta.dreamwidth.org/632798.html and has
comments there.
The question of course arises: What of a second season? And... I don't know. Of course it'd be nice to have more; it's a delightful show, but I'm not sure they can keep up the quality for a second season, and I'd rather have none at all than a subpar one.
I'm also not sure I can handle this fandom for another season. Because dear God are they intense. It's a bit ironic that I should say that, considering how this show ate my brain, but either the rest of fandom is even more intense than I am, or else my frenzy was simply on a different frequency.
It's like, because this is MCU's first story that unambiguously stars a woman (Skye being more of a co-star), it's PERFECT and nothing can be wrong about it. And because Peggy is so front-and-center to it, she too is PERFECT and can never be wrong. Especially since she's the only woman with any relevance to the plot - if there's anything I have against Angie, it's that she only ever services as a moon in orbit of Peggy; all her own ambitions and desires are sidelined. If there IS a season two, I hope that she gets more to do, or else she'll be an example of the tedious superhero girlfriend trope made no better for being attached to a woman.
And I even feel burnt-out on Cartinelli, because the whole ANYTHING LESS THAN COMPLETE WORSHIP IS HOMOPHOBIC angle, while more understandable in femslash (since it's often written by actual lesbian and bi women) is still tiresome as all fuck.
Maybe I'm just getting too old for this shit.
***
Instead of AC, we have Agents of SHIELD back, which I'm now caught up on. Like people have said, it does pick up pace, plotwise, once the HYDRA stuff is set in motion... but I can't help feeling that the problem was never the plot. Yes, they did a bunch of MOTW episodes, but so do a lot of shows, and without feeling so much like they're treading water.
The trouble was the characters, and it still is. I can't quite put my finger on it, if it's in the acting or the writing or the directing, but my level of giving a shit is considerably lower than it should be at this point. It's been a season and a half, and usually I have a favourite long before that point. Here, I have the people I occasionally care about (May, Mack, Fitz & Simmons - they're not really Fitzsimmons any longer, are they?) and the people I don't (anyone else). There are simply too many scenes I watch and go: "This would be so much more affecting if I cared."
In my meaner moments I think that it's because they decided that with Coulson so dull and uncharismatic, they had to make sure that no one else outshone him. My apologies to Coulson fans, but the only time I've ever liked him was in the oneshot, and that one was awesome specifically BECAUSE he's so dull and uncharismatic that his actions served as a counterpoint to that.
Still, I keep watching, for some reason... I guess it is the plot. Though I do feel a bit irked about the plot too, because the way they're selling it as members of HYDRA infiltrating SHIELD and SHIELD itself being good kind of feels like a betrayal of the story told in CATWS. But maybe I was never meant to read it the way I did, which was that the HYDRA type of thinking infiltrated SHIELD to the point where non-HYDRA members of SHIELD started making HYDRA type of decisions. Like a Third Wave sort of thing. To me, the AOS approach is a lot less interesting. So what is it that makes the show so addictive?
***
The complete opposite is Jane the Virgin, where I love the characters and am delighted by every episode, yet am still only up to ep 10. For some reason, I just don't feel the need to watch it very often. Maybe it's just a tad too sweet and only works in small doses, as dessert...
Gosh, I'm negative today, aren't I? This entry was originally posted at http://katta.dreamwidth.org/632798.html and has
comments there.