Lewis
Last night I watched the new episode of Lewis, "The Dead of Winter" (4x01).
I had fun playing "spot the Brideshead Revisited allusions" (e.g. Mortmaigne, DC Hooper), but otherwise I found the episode a bit disappointing. The plot was shapeless and unexciting, the supporting characters all felt much flatter than is typical of Lewis, and there wasn't much development even for the main characters. Lewis and Hathaway's disagreements were a less-interesting retread of "Life Born of Fire," and we simply didn't get enough sense of Hathaway's distress over the old case (the one where he found the murdered girl) to emphathize with him.
Most disappointing of all was Hathaway's romantic backstory. It frustrates me beyond words that, when the show strongly implied for most of three seasons that Hathaway was queer, we've now had two more-or-less consecutive episodes (last season's finale and the new ep) that are all about establishing his heterosexual credentials. And yes, I know he could still be bisexual. But if he is, I want the show to make it canon, damn it! I want his relationships with men to get the same prominence as his relationships with women. Otherwise, what was all that hinting for? Was it just the usual, worn-out cynical plot to drag in viewers with a hint of "scandal" without daring to really have a major character who's anything but heterosexual? I get enough of that kind of bullshit on American TV, damn it.
Crossposted at Dreamwidth (
comments); you can comment here or there.
I had fun playing "spot the Brideshead Revisited allusions" (e.g. Mortmaigne, DC Hooper), but otherwise I found the episode a bit disappointing. The plot was shapeless and unexciting, the supporting characters all felt much flatter than is typical of Lewis, and there wasn't much development even for the main characters. Lewis and Hathaway's disagreements were a less-interesting retread of "Life Born of Fire," and we simply didn't get enough sense of Hathaway's distress over the old case (the one where he found the murdered girl) to emphathize with him.
Most disappointing of all was Hathaway's romantic backstory. It frustrates me beyond words that, when the show strongly implied for most of three seasons that Hathaway was queer, we've now had two more-or-less consecutive episodes (last season's finale and the new ep) that are all about establishing his heterosexual credentials. And yes, I know he could still be bisexual. But if he is, I want the show to make it canon, damn it! I want his relationships with men to get the same prominence as his relationships with women. Otherwise, what was all that hinting for? Was it just the usual, worn-out cynical plot to drag in viewers with a hint of "scandal" without daring to really have a major character who's anything but heterosexual? I get enough of that kind of bullshit on American TV, damn it.
Crossposted at Dreamwidth (
comments); you can comment here or there.