I couldn't let that pass without comment...
Yes, yesterday's TV made me do a reaction post (you know, those things I don't do because of people shaking their heads at me for foolishly enjoying things.)
And I don't mean SJA, which I forgot about, and forgot to be excited about, because SPOILERS for months and months. No, Spooks 9.06 which is another matter entirely:
Firstly, I’ve had a kind of wish list for each new season, which goes something like this:
1. Fill the vacancies, and have banter on the Grid. Possibly get locked in.
2. Slightly impossible: Get Howard Brenton to write an episode
3. Even more impossible: bring back Zaf/Malcolm/Tom/Tessa/Juliet
You know, S9 is doing pretty well on my wishlist stakes, and I’m loving it. Before I get onto the reason I’m excited enough to write a reaction post, my two things I don’t like:
1. That Maya is a plot device (and, so, Vaughan has this plan that involves going out with Maya - assuming she is single/willing to break up with someone for him, won’t fall in love with him properly, and will immediately go off with Lucas when he arrives, despite the intervening time. Also that Lucas will still be crazy over Maya after 8 years being tortured by the Russians, losing his first wife, and having an affair with a crazy fake CIA lady. This plan deserves to fall apart and not hang on the assumption that the audience will immediately get that Maya is Lucas’s original True Love and that this therefore explains everything. No.) All the audience [i.e. me sees is Lucas have a Really Dumb Love Affair. Again. Why not have had her be a family member? - it would at least have been a variant plot device, given Elisaveta and Sarah. Or allowing for Vaughn’s knows-everything-about-Lucas thing, someone he set him up with, knowing she was his type. Or maybe Lucas only goes for evil fake Americans, or exes he can stalk, in which case, fair enough…)
2. 9.04 where Lucas gets the guy’s password by watching him type it in, and the password is visible on the screen. What? WHAT? (Lucas could have seen where he typed, or gone back to the CCTV or something to get it, but MI5 have visible passwords? Because everyone is a spy and will work out the password anyway? I handwave a lot of things happily for Spooks & their IT is always bit unreal, but even so... My workplace are obsessive about passwords and security, and they’re just the local council…)
So, there was banter. (Dmitri called Ruth ‘Evershed’). People got locked on the grid. And there was Malcolm. Funnily enough, I was thinking to myself as the episode starts that I can’t get used to no Malcolm, and whenever I write anything, or even think about writing things, which isn’t often, in my head Malcolm is there, or involved somehow, because how can we really not have Malcolm? And there he was, completely unexpected [by me]. And Spooks - I don’t know any other show where I would be seriously, seriously afraid the current lead is going to kill the returning much-loved, long-running character. Twice. Except I was pretty sure that if Malcolm knew Lucas was up to no good he’d be gone (and, see I am totally happy to handwave that Malcolm can do super-speedy house moving, taking his elderly mother and everything in a few hours, because: hey, Spooks.).
And next week: Malcolm again! (And Tariq replaced Colin, not Malcolm, so… Well, I won’t hold my breath, but I’m good at the denial and the wishful thinking.) And… um… does that leave anything for 9.08 going by the epic trailer?
I suppose you could say this series is like Spooks: the greatest hits... but maybe that's not such a bad thing? And Malcolm is back, for two episodes at least. MALCOLM.
Oh, and also, I am reliably informed (thanks, pedanther that Richard Armitage has been cast as Thorin in the Hobbit film. He will be a dwarf. Richard Armitage will be shorter than me. Probably.)
I have been quiet of late, but I am still loving ITV's Downton Abbey... and next week's trailer looked like all our potential ships are taking sail, and violence and politics, and Votes for Women, and who knows what?
Oh, and I want to lay a bet that Mrs Patmore only needs glasses.
(Yes, this show is all about winning the local flower competition and the cook losing her eyesight... and random guests dying in places they shouldn't, and I'm almost starting to like Thomas and O'Brien for being boo-hissable where pretty much everyone else is so wonderfully likeable.)
Two announcements for those not watching the comm downton_abbey:
Downton Abbey's overseas showing info
and, for persiflage_1, yep, I'm afraid, we can't escape the inevitability of the time and place, as we feared. (Strangely, now I know, I feel a lot happier about it.):
info on Julian Fellowes's plan for the show and possibility of a S3. I apologise if that counts as a spoiler, but I've been taking bets in my head on who dies in WW1 ever since ep 1. (No 1. candidate for dying: William. Daisy will be sorry. I mean, I hope not, but... he's homesick and clumsy, and young, and... yeah.)
But, anyway, it is still all happy and about the wars of the roses for the moment, and everything. ♥ for it.
Plus, have obtained S6 of TWW (legally, I hasten to add), and am racing through it. I think I'm turning into a TV addict, and I have to find the time to catch up with SJA at some point, too.
And I don't mean SJA, which I forgot about, and forgot to be excited about, because SPOILERS for months and months. No, Spooks 9.06 which is another matter entirely:
Firstly, I’ve had a kind of wish list for each new season, which goes something like this:
1. Fill the vacancies, and have banter on the Grid. Possibly get locked in.
2. Slightly impossible: Get Howard Brenton to write an episode
3. Even more impossible: bring back Zaf/Malcolm/Tom/Tessa/Juliet
You know, S9 is doing pretty well on my wishlist stakes, and I’m loving it. Before I get onto the reason I’m excited enough to write a reaction post, my two things I don’t like:
1. That Maya is a plot device (and, so, Vaughan has this plan that involves going out with Maya - assuming she is single/willing to break up with someone for him, won’t fall in love with him properly, and will immediately go off with Lucas when he arrives, despite the intervening time. Also that Lucas will still be crazy over Maya after 8 years being tortured by the Russians, losing his first wife, and having an affair with a crazy fake CIA lady. This plan deserves to fall apart and not hang on the assumption that the audience will immediately get that Maya is Lucas’s original True Love and that this therefore explains everything. No.) All the audience [i.e. me sees is Lucas have a Really Dumb Love Affair. Again. Why not have had her be a family member? - it would at least have been a variant plot device, given Elisaveta and Sarah. Or allowing for Vaughn’s knows-everything-about-Lucas thing, someone he set him up with, knowing she was his type. Or maybe Lucas only goes for evil fake Americans, or exes he can stalk, in which case, fair enough…)
2. 9.04 where Lucas gets the guy’s password by watching him type it in, and the password is visible on the screen. What? WHAT? (Lucas could have seen where he typed, or gone back to the CCTV or something to get it, but MI5 have visible passwords? Because everyone is a spy and will work out the password anyway? I handwave a lot of things happily for Spooks & their IT is always bit unreal, but even so... My workplace are obsessive about passwords and security, and they’re just the local council…)
So, there was banter. (Dmitri called Ruth ‘Evershed’). People got locked on the grid. And there was Malcolm. Funnily enough, I was thinking to myself as the episode starts that I can’t get used to no Malcolm, and whenever I write anything, or even think about writing things, which isn’t often, in my head Malcolm is there, or involved somehow, because how can we really not have Malcolm? And there he was, completely unexpected [by me]. And Spooks - I don’t know any other show where I would be seriously, seriously afraid the current lead is going to kill the returning much-loved, long-running character. Twice. Except I was pretty sure that if Malcolm knew Lucas was up to no good he’d be gone (and, see I am totally happy to handwave that Malcolm can do super-speedy house moving, taking his elderly mother and everything in a few hours, because: hey, Spooks.).
And next week: Malcolm again! (And Tariq replaced Colin, not Malcolm, so… Well, I won’t hold my breath, but I’m good at the denial and the wishful thinking.) And… um… does that leave anything for 9.08 going by the epic trailer?
I suppose you could say this series is like Spooks: the greatest hits... but maybe that's not such a bad thing? And Malcolm is back, for two episodes at least. MALCOLM.
Oh, and also, I am reliably informed (thanks, pedanther that Richard Armitage has been cast as Thorin in the Hobbit film. He will be a dwarf. Richard Armitage will be shorter than me. Probably.)
I have been quiet of late, but I am still loving ITV's Downton Abbey... and next week's trailer looked like all our potential ships are taking sail, and violence and politics, and Votes for Women, and who knows what?
Oh, and I want to lay a bet that Mrs Patmore only needs glasses.
(Yes, this show is all about winning the local flower competition and the cook losing her eyesight... and random guests dying in places they shouldn't, and I'm almost starting to like Thomas and O'Brien for being boo-hissable where pretty much everyone else is so wonderfully likeable.)
Two announcements for those not watching the comm downton_abbey:
Downton Abbey's overseas showing info
and, for persiflage_1, yep, I'm afraid, we can't escape the inevitability of the time and place, as we feared. (Strangely, now I know, I feel a lot happier about it.):
info on Julian Fellowes's plan for the show and possibility of a S3. I apologise if that counts as a spoiler, but I've been taking bets in my head on who dies in WW1 ever since ep 1. (No 1. candidate for dying: William. Daisy will be sorry. I mean, I hope not, but... he's homesick and clumsy, and young, and... yeah.)
But, anyway, it is still all happy and about the wars of the roses for the moment, and everything. ♥ for it.
Plus, have obtained S6 of TWW (legally, I hasten to add), and am racing through it. I think I'm turning into a TV addict, and I have to find the time to catch up with SJA at some point, too.