TeeVee
Neverland part 1: The first half of a 2 part miniseries that serves as a prequel to Peter Pan. I admit, I mostly watched for Anna Friel as Anne Bonny. Uhm...Anna Friel as a villain is something else? Entertaining except for the part where Hook was a charming rogue who loved his little orphan boys so terribly much and just wanted to take his proper place back, until Anne Bonny and her evil evil vagina got ahold of him for 5 seconds and made him go bad. In case we weren't sure that was what was happening, Peter makes sure to point it out to us. Repeatedly. But nice visuals and fun aside from that part. I'll probably eventually watch the second half, but feel no real drive to right now.
Once Upon A Time eps 1.5-1.6:
Wow show, you actually managed to make me care about a guy's angsty backstory two episodes in a row! I mean, you ruined it a bit with Jiminy/Archie at the end where he basically says he's going to encourage Emma to fight Regina for custody of Henry.
Unfortunately, I don't think there's any way to deny, at this point, that the show has a negative perception of non-biological family units. Which is a really, really grating aspect that's only going to get worse, I suspect. I mean, I love Emma and all, but her attitude towards Regina drives me crazy. (Whereas I'm surprised Regina is as tolerant as she is.) Not as much as Henry's attitude to her, though.
Honestly, if we didn't know the backstory, the only real mark against Regina would be the thing with the sheriff, and that's only really wrong because of the deception involved, unless we learn that she;s forcing him to sleep with her. (And did anyone else think Emma's reaction to that was a bit much? I mean, she's right to be pissed at him for tricking her like that and about his sneaking into the house for sex with Regina while Henry's asleep being unfair to Henry, but it felt a bit like overkill.) As an aside, thanks to 10th Kingdom, I find both Snow White (or Snow White Representative)/Huntsman and Queen/Huntsman to be perfectly natural pairings.
Beyond that, though, I kinda...can't help but think this might actually be becoming The Show Where People Make Right Choices? I'm thinking mostly of Mary Margaret and David/John/Whatever, even if it took him a while to get there. They aren't romantic choices, but not knowing about their real pasts, they're the right ones. Also, I'm sure everyone is hating on Katherine/Abigail, but whatever. Even if I wasn't inclined to be sympathetic to her in Storybrook, I'd be willing to forgive her a lot just because she has Midas for a father. Talk about a nightmare.
I was glad to see Henry actually acting like a real kid in ep 5 instead of an all knowing plot device not nearly as cute as his creators think, but I didn't miss him in ep 6. Where adults got to be adults and the adults had loads of important moments both personally (Regina has a friend! Mary Margaret and David deal with guiltywrong feelings! Emma learns secrets! Sheriff McScruffyPants...is rightfully ashamed?) and in their relationships.
James not really being James is certainly very interesting. I like doubles and fake identities and long lost twins. Also, yes, he gets credit for looking in a mirror right about the time when he gets his fake!memories back. I was going to say that he doesn't seem to have acquired the training for the skills he showed in ep 3, but then I remembered that the skills he displayed were archery, setting traps, and tracking, all of which actually make sense for a young man raised on a fairly isolated farm right next door to the forest, particularly one who is poor and apparently has had to provide for both himself and his mother, and the farm itself doesn't seem to actually give them much.
Thematically, though, it makes perfect semnse. Even barring the fact that we seem to be leading towards noone being who they seemed in Fairy Tale Land, John Doe remembers David's life, but feels no personal connection to it. Charming has been told about James's life, but has no realy connection to it. And then there's the "original" Prince Charming of "Snow White," who is almost literally a nonentity. He shows up in the last few paragrphs, decides the girl in the glass case would make a great ornament for his palace, who, when the apple is dislodged as he's carting her off, wakes up, so he marries her. So, he's rich and likes pretty things. The end. Reinterpretting him as a man who, in both lives, really has no idea who he is in the context of the life he finds himself in makes perfect sense to me.
At this point, I really hope that "breaking the curse" doesn't result in everyone going back to fairy tale land, but instead with everyone moving on with their lives in the real world and learning to move forward and be happy. In particular, I think that, narratively, it may be most important for Regina herself to be happy. After all, the curse was supposed to create a world where she was happy, but it really hasn't. Instead, it created a world where no one was happy and remained stagnant. Whatever Snow White did to make her so vengeful (I'm sticking with Snow White somehow causing Regina to lose her own child-hence her near desperation when it comes to Henry-until proven wrong) it still eats at her, and she clearly hasn't dealt with it yet.
Also, while i still get an antisemitic vibe from Mr. Gold, Gold/Rumplestiltskin is proving to be rather entertaining. Though I'm really bugged with how we see people going into bargains with him. In the original story, I was never particularly bothered by the miller's daughter trying to get out of the bargain because for her, it was the bargain or death, and not only did Rumplestiltskin know that, but he also helped create the situation, possibly deliberately. Here, though, we don't have that. He-Who-We-Know-As-James's mother seems to have viewed real!James as a spare or something, and Cinderella (who, admittedly, I think was actually younger than her Storybrook counterpart) basically went "You just blew up my fairy godmother! well, I didn't know her anyway, let me sign the contract without reading it." Ashley I mind less, as she was clearly bullied and pressured into it. Unlike the miller's daughter, her life wasn't literally on the line, but I see how she thought she had no other choice. And I suspect we'll learn he had more to do with Emm giving Henry up than just acquiring him for Regina? Emma's conversation with Ashley in the laundry room pretty heavily implied that, like Ashley, she was pressured to give Henry up when she may not have wanted to. And she still went for a closed adoption instead of an open one, and doesn't seem to have thought much about him in between. (I do get why, after he tracked her down and literally dragged her into his life, she would feel compelled to see if he's as happy as she no doubt hoped he would be when she gave him up, but it doesn't stop my being bugged by hte :now his REAL mother is here" thing.)
In general, I think the show is very much finding its feet in many ways and settling nicely into its metanarrative arc and I love the focus on finding your real identity. I just wish we didn't have the negativity towards non-biological family units.
Haven Christmas Special/2.13/whatever-SyFy-is-officially-calling-it: I love how this episode starts with bright and cheery Christmas music during a montage of all the creepiest/most awful bits of things that have happened and then suddenly it's "la la la DID HER ARM JUST FALL OFF?" And so it went for the next 40 minutes. With the weird creepy spooky LALALA CHEERY HOLIDAY MUSIC, not the random bodyparts falling off. This episode was basically just lots of fun, and probably a good jumping on point (maybe intended that way?) if you're curious about the show.
Ringer 1.10;
I...do not know how I feel about this episode at all. We have apparently killing Gemma for real, Bridget/Andrew sex which, even when I like the pairing (I much prefer Bridget/Malcolm at this point, but whatever makes her happy...) skeeves me out without him knowing the truth, and Juliet either being raped by her teacher or being rejected by him and retaliating by lying about being raped. SIGH. OTOH, I was right about that one agent guy, Marchado got to actually catch someone (I suspect I'm in the minority in that I like him a lot?) I didn't get weird vibes from Andrew like I have the last few episodes, and Siobahn is back and got rid of Charlie for us. Actually, I think the parts I didn't like may have outweighed the ones I did. Also, Siobahn's boytoy was running around in swimming trunks in an episode of Castle that I watched this week, so it was a bit disconcerting to see him here, even though I recognized him in Castle.
Lost Girl 2.9-2.11: In general, I think these episodes were pretty solid?
Uhm...except maybe where I'm pretty sure that in the first season, Bo said she'd accidentally killed more than one person? But I'm glad we finally got a look into her past, and her feelings on literally being a slave to her libido.
The bodyswap episode was fabulous. Though, if there's ever a bodyswap episode of a genre show that isn't fun, the universe may not know what to do with itself. The Kenzi/Dyson swap was the best part, though I have a sneaking suspicion that the episode was an excuse to have Kenzi and Hale kiss without the characters actually kissing.
Any, all this stuff means that New Ash is the Big Bad of the season and will go away at the end of the season, right? Right?
And I have liked Dyson again for 4 episodes in a row! Notably, those are the episodes in which he's regularly getting laid. Just saying. I'm getting terribly worried about Kiara, though. Things are going too well, which means they're probably going to kill her for maximum angst. Please don;t do that, show!
Not sure about the "Bo's epic destiny!" thing even though I'm not quite sure why. Possibly residual annoyance at how some of last season played out.
I've decided to move Homeland to being a DVD show instead of a "try to watch as it comes out" show. Not because I don't like it, it just falls into that category for me where I like it but in "When I have it" way instead of a "NEED NOW so I can talk about it" way, Also, I am apparently trying to watch too many shows at once. (Particularly too many + watching the few asian shows I'm watching ATM.)
Once Upon A Time eps 1.5-1.6:
Wow show, you actually managed to make me care about a guy's angsty backstory two episodes in a row! I mean, you ruined it a bit with Jiminy/Archie at the end where he basically says he's going to encourage Emma to fight Regina for custody of Henry.
Unfortunately, I don't think there's any way to deny, at this point, that the show has a negative perception of non-biological family units. Which is a really, really grating aspect that's only going to get worse, I suspect. I mean, I love Emma and all, but her attitude towards Regina drives me crazy. (Whereas I'm surprised Regina is as tolerant as she is.) Not as much as Henry's attitude to her, though.
Honestly, if we didn't know the backstory, the only real mark against Regina would be the thing with the sheriff, and that's only really wrong because of the deception involved, unless we learn that she;s forcing him to sleep with her. (And did anyone else think Emma's reaction to that was a bit much? I mean, she's right to be pissed at him for tricking her like that and about his sneaking into the house for sex with Regina while Henry's asleep being unfair to Henry, but it felt a bit like overkill.) As an aside, thanks to 10th Kingdom, I find both Snow White (or Snow White Representative)/Huntsman and Queen/Huntsman to be perfectly natural pairings.
Beyond that, though, I kinda...can't help but think this might actually be becoming The Show Where People Make Right Choices? I'm thinking mostly of Mary Margaret and David/John/Whatever, even if it took him a while to get there. They aren't romantic choices, but not knowing about their real pasts, they're the right ones. Also, I'm sure everyone is hating on Katherine/Abigail, but whatever. Even if I wasn't inclined to be sympathetic to her in Storybrook, I'd be willing to forgive her a lot just because she has Midas for a father. Talk about a nightmare.
I was glad to see Henry actually acting like a real kid in ep 5 instead of an all knowing plot device not nearly as cute as his creators think, but I didn't miss him in ep 6. Where adults got to be adults and the adults had loads of important moments both personally (Regina has a friend! Mary Margaret and David deal with guiltywrong feelings! Emma learns secrets! Sheriff McScruffyPants...is rightfully ashamed?) and in their relationships.
James not really being James is certainly very interesting. I like doubles and fake identities and long lost twins. Also, yes, he gets credit for looking in a mirror right about the time when he gets his fake!memories back. I was going to say that he doesn't seem to have acquired the training for the skills he showed in ep 3, but then I remembered that the skills he displayed were archery, setting traps, and tracking, all of which actually make sense for a young man raised on a fairly isolated farm right next door to the forest, particularly one who is poor and apparently has had to provide for both himself and his mother, and the farm itself doesn't seem to actually give them much.
Thematically, though, it makes perfect semnse. Even barring the fact that we seem to be leading towards noone being who they seemed in Fairy Tale Land, John Doe remembers David's life, but feels no personal connection to it. Charming has been told about James's life, but has no realy connection to it. And then there's the "original" Prince Charming of "Snow White," who is almost literally a nonentity. He shows up in the last few paragrphs, decides the girl in the glass case would make a great ornament for his palace, who, when the apple is dislodged as he's carting her off, wakes up, so he marries her. So, he's rich and likes pretty things. The end. Reinterpretting him as a man who, in both lives, really has no idea who he is in the context of the life he finds himself in makes perfect sense to me.
At this point, I really hope that "breaking the curse" doesn't result in everyone going back to fairy tale land, but instead with everyone moving on with their lives in the real world and learning to move forward and be happy. In particular, I think that, narratively, it may be most important for Regina herself to be happy. After all, the curse was supposed to create a world where she was happy, but it really hasn't. Instead, it created a world where no one was happy and remained stagnant. Whatever Snow White did to make her so vengeful (I'm sticking with Snow White somehow causing Regina to lose her own child-hence her near desperation when it comes to Henry-until proven wrong) it still eats at her, and she clearly hasn't dealt with it yet.
Also, while i still get an antisemitic vibe from Mr. Gold, Gold/Rumplestiltskin is proving to be rather entertaining. Though I'm really bugged with how we see people going into bargains with him. In the original story, I was never particularly bothered by the miller's daughter trying to get out of the bargain because for her, it was the bargain or death, and not only did Rumplestiltskin know that, but he also helped create the situation, possibly deliberately. Here, though, we don't have that. He-Who-We-Know-As-James's mother seems to have viewed real!James as a spare or something, and Cinderella (who, admittedly, I think was actually younger than her Storybrook counterpart) basically went "You just blew up my fairy godmother! well, I didn't know her anyway, let me sign the contract without reading it." Ashley I mind less, as she was clearly bullied and pressured into it. Unlike the miller's daughter, her life wasn't literally on the line, but I see how she thought she had no other choice. And I suspect we'll learn he had more to do with Emm giving Henry up than just acquiring him for Regina? Emma's conversation with Ashley in the laundry room pretty heavily implied that, like Ashley, she was pressured to give Henry up when she may not have wanted to. And she still went for a closed adoption instead of an open one, and doesn't seem to have thought much about him in between. (I do get why, after he tracked her down and literally dragged her into his life, she would feel compelled to see if he's as happy as she no doubt hoped he would be when she gave him up, but it doesn't stop my being bugged by hte :now his REAL mother is here" thing.)
In general, I think the show is very much finding its feet in many ways and settling nicely into its metanarrative arc and I love the focus on finding your real identity. I just wish we didn't have the negativity towards non-biological family units.
Haven Christmas Special/2.13/whatever-SyFy-is-officially-calling-it: I love how this episode starts with bright and cheery Christmas music during a montage of all the creepiest/most awful bits of things that have happened and then suddenly it's "la la la DID HER ARM JUST FALL OFF?" And so it went for the next 40 minutes. With the weird creepy spooky LALALA CHEERY HOLIDAY MUSIC, not the random bodyparts falling off. This episode was basically just lots of fun, and probably a good jumping on point (maybe intended that way?) if you're curious about the show.
Ringer 1.10;
I...do not know how I feel about this episode at all. We have apparently killing Gemma for real, Bridget/Andrew sex which, even when I like the pairing (I much prefer Bridget/Malcolm at this point, but whatever makes her happy...) skeeves me out without him knowing the truth, and Juliet either being raped by her teacher or being rejected by him and retaliating by lying about being raped. SIGH. OTOH, I was right about that one agent guy, Marchado got to actually catch someone (I suspect I'm in the minority in that I like him a lot?) I didn't get weird vibes from Andrew like I have the last few episodes, and Siobahn is back and got rid of Charlie for us. Actually, I think the parts I didn't like may have outweighed the ones I did. Also, Siobahn's boytoy was running around in swimming trunks in an episode of Castle that I watched this week, so it was a bit disconcerting to see him here, even though I recognized him in Castle.
Lost Girl 2.9-2.11: In general, I think these episodes were pretty solid?
Uhm...except maybe where I'm pretty sure that in the first season, Bo said she'd accidentally killed more than one person? But I'm glad we finally got a look into her past, and her feelings on literally being a slave to her libido.
The bodyswap episode was fabulous. Though, if there's ever a bodyswap episode of a genre show that isn't fun, the universe may not know what to do with itself. The Kenzi/Dyson swap was the best part, though I have a sneaking suspicion that the episode was an excuse to have Kenzi and Hale kiss without the characters actually kissing.
Any, all this stuff means that New Ash is the Big Bad of the season and will go away at the end of the season, right? Right?
And I have liked Dyson again for 4 episodes in a row! Notably, those are the episodes in which he's regularly getting laid. Just saying. I'm getting terribly worried about Kiara, though. Things are going too well, which means they're probably going to kill her for maximum angst. Please don;t do that, show!
Not sure about the "Bo's epic destiny!" thing even though I'm not quite sure why. Possibly residual annoyance at how some of last season played out.
I've decided to move Homeland to being a DVD show instead of a "try to watch as it comes out" show. Not because I don't like it, it just falls into that category for me where I like it but in "When I have it" way instead of a "NEED NOW so I can talk about it" way, Also, I am apparently trying to watch too many shows at once. (Particularly too many + watching the few asian shows I'm watching ATM.)