... and touched the face of God
I am BASKING in the relief from a rather icky stomach bug that I will save you all from imagining by not talking about it anymore. (but it was REALLY icky).
So.
I watched TV! I watched TV that wasn't Torchwood and I liked it! (no, I really am not watching a lot of tv these days. Top Gear, NCIS, True Blood now it's just started and the Supersizers).
Usually it irritates me when the 'plot' is sacrificed for the subplot but not in NCIS 6:14 'Love and War'. It's not even as though it was an uninteresting plot although it was fairly obvious who the bad guy was (and how pretty is Danneel Harris with brown hair? Adorable is what). No, the actual plot was how on earth Tony was going to confess to McGee that he's been pretending to be a girl on the internet and CHATTING HIM UP ALL WEEKEND. This is what I like about NCIS - on the one hand, Tony really is at worst exceptionally cruel and at best totally thoughtless and yet there's this more than faint hint that he's not being either cruel or thoughtless. And this is where the subtext turns into the CAPSLOCK OF LOVE and starts flashing obnoxiously.
Tony picks on McGee. Not all the time, but a lot of the time. It's one of his favourite hobbies, he does it without thinking about it. But he's very rarely cruel and he has proved himself to be very sensitive to McGee's moods though I'm not going to go into that in great detail as other people have done it better and I'm only concerned with this one episode. Basically, Tony likes to play. Playing with Gibbs is unwise and playing with Ziva generally means he comes off the worse, oh, nine times out of ten, so that really only leaves McGee who is the only one who gives him the respect due to his position as senior field agent and older. (The respect Tony gets from Gibbs and Ziva is different and to do with his abilities and how good he is at his job. Which he is). Nor is this a brotherly relationship - Tony pokes and McGee... does not really poke back which suggests he likes the attention. Latterly, Abby and McGee's relationship has been more fraternal than anyone else's and it does make for an interesting shift.
ANYWAY. Let's look at this. Tony pretends to be a "fifth level sorceress" called Claire and spends most of the weekend flirting with McGee over email and IM. He is so successful that McGee thinks that "Claire" is his perfect girl. He even confesses to Tony that she might be "the one". We know that Tony's particular talents lend themselves well to undercover work however the beginning of the episode proves that he is totally inept when it comes to computer stuff (McGee fixes his computer by pressing one key) so it's not like they spent all weekend talking about WOW or programming stuff. It's not a huge jump that, persona set up, Tony was essentially himself, albiet himself in flirty mode. This leads to a conclusion which is simultaneously hilarious and sad: Tony is McGee's perfect girl.
At some point over the week, Ziva tells McGee that Tony was "Claire" but at what point, we have no idea. I would suggest that she took pity on him after "Claire" stood him up for a date and he went back to the office. There's nothing to suggest that McGee knows before then and his insistence on giving Claire another chance is pretty much in line with how he interacts with women he likes - witness Abby and Erin, for example. The ending to the episode is brilliant, with McGee declaring again that he's not giving up on Claire and telling Tony very seriously that he believes she's the one. He makes a move towards Tony and both the viewer and Tony are sure that he's going to take Tony's hand but instead he's of course going for another slice of pizza. Tony flees and Ziva scolds McGee for torturing Tony.
It would have been so easy for this to have been all about Tony's thoughtlessness and McGee's humiliation and mortification and yet it manages to reveal something about the characters and relationships. The role reversal at the end helps to even things out and it is particularly appropriate that Ziva reins McGee in over his torturing of Tony just as she reproved Tony earlier in the episode. 'Love and War' reaffirms McGee's essential sweetness of nature (Ziva describes him as a gentleman in other episodes and she's not wrong. He is by far the nicest member of the team) as well as an inherent vulnerability and a lack of self confidence. What the ending also stresses is that McGee, as much as any of his teammates, likes to play and he particularly likes to play with Tony. I'm using 'play' as shorthand for 'behaviours we in engage in with people with whom we are emotionally close to and enjoy the company of which may include all or some of the following: teasing, banter, play-fighting, pranks and so on'. I have a hard time believing that Tony deliberately set out to humilate McGee - a prank is one thing but by the time he confesses to Ziva, he is well aware that it's gone far beyond a simple joke. He is avoiding humiliating McGee throughout the episode by trying to get him to give up on Claire without letting it slip that he's Claire. Which brings it right around to what the hell was he thinking? A prank that falls within 'play' would have had Tony confessing over IM within a few messages which might have left McGee a little resentful and bruised but not overly damaged. Admittedly, McGee is stronger than Tony gives him credit (Tony's is a creature of hierarchy and McGee is always going to be his probie) but that is always going to be a facet of their relationship (Gibbs even alludes to this in an earlier episode when he points out to McGee that his first partner still calls him 'probie'). It's not completely out of the realms of possiblity that Tony 'forgot' that he was playing undercover - or not forgot exactly but shunted it off to another part of his brain - and was just himself, playing with McGee (all weekend? He really couldn't find anything better to do, really?).
What I like about NCIS is that such a storyline can work without anyone ending up horribly mortified, without irrevocably damaging relationships and without anyone having a homosexual panic. I like that they behave like real people rather than the facsimiles that some procederal shows produce. In other words, I like that they play.
Of True Blood I'll say only that everyone who is not watching should be watching it because it is full of adorable and delicious characters and I foresee a season of playing 'Spot the Monster' and writing lots of meta. I know that there's been some ragging over the accents but I'm deliriously far away from the actual South so they sounded fine to me. It all felt very atmospheric and interesting and I was beaming throughout most of the episode. (I was going to write more but then I went all tl;dr over NCIS so...)
And if there is anything more adorable that Giles Coren in The Supersizers Eat... then I have yet to see it. (yes, I am aware that he's a bit of a wanker IRL but he is ADORABLE on Top Gear levels on this).
FINALLY, yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the Moon landing which is probably the single most significant event since those early fish flapped onto the shore and grew lungs. Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin slipped the surly bonds of Earth and trod the high untrespassed sanctity of space and changed the world with one small step.
And because it is one of my all time favourite quotes:
We came out of the cave and we looked over the hill and we saw fire. And we crossed the ocean and we pioneered the West and we took to the sky. The history of man is hung on a timeline of exploration.
So.
I watched TV! I watched TV that wasn't Torchwood and I liked it! (no, I really am not watching a lot of tv these days. Top Gear, NCIS, True Blood now it's just started and the Supersizers).
Usually it irritates me when the 'plot' is sacrificed for the subplot but not in NCIS 6:14 'Love and War'. It's not even as though it was an uninteresting plot although it was fairly obvious who the bad guy was (and how pretty is Danneel Harris with brown hair? Adorable is what). No, the actual plot was how on earth Tony was going to confess to McGee that he's been pretending to be a girl on the internet and CHATTING HIM UP ALL WEEKEND. This is what I like about NCIS - on the one hand, Tony really is at worst exceptionally cruel and at best totally thoughtless and yet there's this more than faint hint that he's not being either cruel or thoughtless. And this is where the subtext turns into the CAPSLOCK OF LOVE and starts flashing obnoxiously.
Tony picks on McGee. Not all the time, but a lot of the time. It's one of his favourite hobbies, he does it without thinking about it. But he's very rarely cruel and he has proved himself to be very sensitive to McGee's moods though I'm not going to go into that in great detail as other people have done it better and I'm only concerned with this one episode. Basically, Tony likes to play. Playing with Gibbs is unwise and playing with Ziva generally means he comes off the worse, oh, nine times out of ten, so that really only leaves McGee who is the only one who gives him the respect due to his position as senior field agent and older. (The respect Tony gets from Gibbs and Ziva is different and to do with his abilities and how good he is at his job. Which he is). Nor is this a brotherly relationship - Tony pokes and McGee... does not really poke back which suggests he likes the attention. Latterly, Abby and McGee's relationship has been more fraternal than anyone else's and it does make for an interesting shift.
ANYWAY. Let's look at this. Tony pretends to be a "fifth level sorceress" called Claire and spends most of the weekend flirting with McGee over email and IM. He is so successful that McGee thinks that "Claire" is his perfect girl. He even confesses to Tony that she might be "the one". We know that Tony's particular talents lend themselves well to undercover work however the beginning of the episode proves that he is totally inept when it comes to computer stuff (McGee fixes his computer by pressing one key) so it's not like they spent all weekend talking about WOW or programming stuff. It's not a huge jump that, persona set up, Tony was essentially himself, albiet himself in flirty mode. This leads to a conclusion which is simultaneously hilarious and sad: Tony is McGee's perfect girl.
At some point over the week, Ziva tells McGee that Tony was "Claire" but at what point, we have no idea. I would suggest that she took pity on him after "Claire" stood him up for a date and he went back to the office. There's nothing to suggest that McGee knows before then and his insistence on giving Claire another chance is pretty much in line with how he interacts with women he likes - witness Abby and Erin, for example. The ending to the episode is brilliant, with McGee declaring again that he's not giving up on Claire and telling Tony very seriously that he believes she's the one. He makes a move towards Tony and both the viewer and Tony are sure that he's going to take Tony's hand but instead he's of course going for another slice of pizza. Tony flees and Ziva scolds McGee for torturing Tony.
It would have been so easy for this to have been all about Tony's thoughtlessness and McGee's humiliation and mortification and yet it manages to reveal something about the characters and relationships. The role reversal at the end helps to even things out and it is particularly appropriate that Ziva reins McGee in over his torturing of Tony just as she reproved Tony earlier in the episode. 'Love and War' reaffirms McGee's essential sweetness of nature (Ziva describes him as a gentleman in other episodes and she's not wrong. He is by far the nicest member of the team) as well as an inherent vulnerability and a lack of self confidence. What the ending also stresses is that McGee, as much as any of his teammates, likes to play and he particularly likes to play with Tony. I'm using 'play' as shorthand for 'behaviours we in engage in with people with whom we are emotionally close to and enjoy the company of which may include all or some of the following: teasing, banter, play-fighting, pranks and so on'. I have a hard time believing that Tony deliberately set out to humilate McGee - a prank is one thing but by the time he confesses to Ziva, he is well aware that it's gone far beyond a simple joke. He is avoiding humiliating McGee throughout the episode by trying to get him to give up on Claire without letting it slip that he's Claire. Which brings it right around to what the hell was he thinking? A prank that falls within 'play' would have had Tony confessing over IM within a few messages which might have left McGee a little resentful and bruised but not overly damaged. Admittedly, McGee is stronger than Tony gives him credit (Tony's is a creature of hierarchy and McGee is always going to be his probie) but that is always going to be a facet of their relationship (Gibbs even alludes to this in an earlier episode when he points out to McGee that his first partner still calls him 'probie'). It's not completely out of the realms of possiblity that Tony 'forgot' that he was playing undercover - or not forgot exactly but shunted it off to another part of his brain - and was just himself, playing with McGee (all weekend? He really couldn't find anything better to do, really?).
What I like about NCIS is that such a storyline can work without anyone ending up horribly mortified, without irrevocably damaging relationships and without anyone having a homosexual panic. I like that they behave like real people rather than the facsimiles that some procederal shows produce. In other words, I like that they play.
Of True Blood I'll say only that everyone who is not watching should be watching it because it is full of adorable and delicious characters and I foresee a season of playing 'Spot the Monster' and writing lots of meta. I know that there's been some ragging over the accents but I'm deliriously far away from the actual South so they sounded fine to me. It all felt very atmospheric and interesting and I was beaming throughout most of the episode. (I was going to write more but then I went all tl;dr over NCIS so...)
And if there is anything more adorable that Giles Coren in The Supersizers Eat... then I have yet to see it. (yes, I am aware that he's a bit of a wanker IRL but he is ADORABLE on Top Gear levels on this).
FINALLY, yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the Moon landing which is probably the single most significant event since those early fish flapped onto the shore and grew lungs. Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin slipped the surly bonds of Earth and trod the high untrespassed sanctity of space and changed the world with one small step.
And because it is one of my all time favourite quotes:
We came out of the cave and we looked over the hill and we saw fire. And we crossed the ocean and we pioneered the West and we took to the sky. The history of man is hung on a timeline of exploration.