Holiday TV Viewing
Because when I wasn’t jumping every five minutes to rescue live electric wires from C’s teeth, I was lounging in bed re-watching a lot of my favorite shows. And here is what I think:
NIKITA (no spoilers): Is giving ALIAS a run for its money for the position of best show about Kick-Ass Female Agents/ Rogue Agents/ Double Agents. (Which is all kinds of funny because apparently ALIAS was based on the original NIKITA/ LA FEMME NIKITA and now, NIKITA (TV) is based on ALIAS to some extent. Talk about the serpent eating its tail). To the uninitiated, NIKITA is XENA with spies. Maggie Q is the most bad-ass woman on TV right now and Alex (Lynda F’s role) is the most bad-ass protégé since Gabrielle. Oh and there are lots of good-looking men with interesting roles, as well but they are clearly secondary characters. Apart from Nikita and Alex, the most intriguing person in the cast is probably Jaden, another woman. Of course, the fandom hates her. Also the ‘Dress Lady’ is the Chief Interrogator. :P
THE VAMPIRE DIARIES (spoilers for early S1): The show’s HSQ has probably broken the HSQ meter and I am particularly gratified because I loved the show from the beginning when most people were calling it ‘Twilight TV’. One of the things that drew me to the show was Bonnie and the way the show did not make her a Sassy Black Friend but an interesting character with her own agency and arc. I really don’t know what happened half-way Season 1 or whether it was the plan from the start to turn Bonnie into a Magical Negro and leave her there. But something sucks in the State of Mystic Falls about the way Bonnie has been consistently sidelined and treated like a plot device since the death of her grandmother and no amount of HSQ where Elena/Katherine, the Salvatores, Caroline, the Lockwoods are concerned is going to make up for that particular aspect of fail. So, get your act together, Show otherwise I might just bail out on you. On the other side, Elena rocks! She rocks so hard that I want to reach through the TV screen and hug her. The only thing stopping me from trying to do so is the slim but very real possibility that I might accidentally hug Katherine instead. And she’d eat me.
LEGEND OF THE SEEKER S2 (spoilers all the way!): I got the DVD long ago as my way of contributing to the Save The Seeker campaign but I couldn’t bring myself to watch it because I was so heartbroken over the cancellation. Well, I got over that. And it was so much better on re-watching. I remember being slightly irritated by ‘Walter’ which (until the end) I felt was a parody episode to show off Craig Parker’s comedic timing and not advance the plot (shades of ‘Mirror’ in Season 1); but this time around, I LOL’d from beginning to the end. Woobie!Walter is just so adorbs. And Malray really scored lucky finding a friend like that. There were still gaping plot holes and handwaves, large enough to fill a whole essay with - Denee dies how many times again? - but the characters are too adorable for me to care too much :P. I still think Cara’s arc was a wonderful contribution to the show. R/K is the sweetest OTP on screen ever and I love the way Kahlan and Cara are clearly the Lancers to Richard’s Hero. The fight scene in ‘LIGHT’ is still the best Ass-Kicking Fight Scene in the show since Evah. Even though I don’t ship them because I don’t think every cool relationship has to be a romantic one, I love Kahlan/Cara as BFFs. ‘Extinction’ is particularly poignant when you remember what happens next. Talking about which - my only regret is that the creeptastic creep that was Dahlia didn’t just DIAF. Yeah, she and Cara were trained together and yeah, she is just as much a brain-washed victim as any of the other Mord’Sith. Yada yada yada. She tricked Cara, turned her, and continued to serve Darken Rahl even after he was dead. To quote Iroh: she needed to go down. What really kicks is that in the end, she gets rewarded: she never got to be turned into a Mord’Sith. (Shades of Callisto, come to think of it. Mmmm…)
FRINGE (slightly spoilerish but nothing major): Olivia rocks, as always, and the Alt-world is fascinating. But this season would have rocked so much more if the writers didn’t go the whole ‘vagenda’ route with Bolivia. I have thoughts about this and I may write meta.
UNDERCOVERS (no spoilers): I can see why it was cancelled. I think JJ and co. played it too safe and I know why they did so but it ultimately hurt the show. But. But. I still think that if the network/fandom had given it more of a chance, it would have hit its stride eventually.
COVERT AFFAIRS (no spoilers): It was marketed as the new ‘ALIAS’ which is all sorts of wrong because there is no Rambaldi and Annie Walker is not Sydney Bristow. (There Is Only One Sydney Bristow!!!) But. Annie Walker is an interesting character in her own right and even though the show takes pains to show that she is just starting out, there are flashes of brilliance that make the show more than ‘A Year in the Life of the Rookie Agent’. From what I have glimpsed from fringes of fandom, I may be the only person who isn’t shipping Angie (:P). I like them as friends. I’m far keener on Annie/Jai and after Episode 11, I even have a soft spot for Annie/Ben. We’ll see.
CROSS OVER SPECULATION (spoilers? :P): Am I the only one that sees Covert Affairs’s Joan as the grown-up version of The Vampire Diaries’s Caroline in Fringe’s B-universe? And it’s not just the blonde hair. It’s the whole Caroline ‘I am Bossy and will organize not just your life but your country. I can be Catty and don’t ask me a question if you don’t want to know the answer. And my mom taught me how to use a gun since I was 6’ Forbes attitude fast-forward a couple of decades of experience and maturity.
I would love to discuss any of these shows but be careful if you’re not up to date because there might be spoilers in the comments. :D
NIKITA (no spoilers): Is giving ALIAS a run for its money for the position of best show about Kick-Ass Female Agents/ Rogue Agents/ Double Agents. (Which is all kinds of funny because apparently ALIAS was based on the original NIKITA/ LA FEMME NIKITA and now, NIKITA (TV) is based on ALIAS to some extent. Talk about the serpent eating its tail). To the uninitiated, NIKITA is XENA with spies. Maggie Q is the most bad-ass woman on TV right now and Alex (Lynda F’s role) is the most bad-ass protégé since Gabrielle. Oh and there are lots of good-looking men with interesting roles, as well but they are clearly secondary characters. Apart from Nikita and Alex, the most intriguing person in the cast is probably Jaden, another woman. Of course, the fandom hates her. Also the ‘Dress Lady’ is the Chief Interrogator. :P
THE VAMPIRE DIARIES (spoilers for early S1): The show’s HSQ has probably broken the HSQ meter and I am particularly gratified because I loved the show from the beginning when most people were calling it ‘Twilight TV’. One of the things that drew me to the show was Bonnie and the way the show did not make her a Sassy Black Friend but an interesting character with her own agency and arc. I really don’t know what happened half-way Season 1 or whether it was the plan from the start to turn Bonnie into a Magical Negro and leave her there. But something sucks in the State of Mystic Falls about the way Bonnie has been consistently sidelined and treated like a plot device since the death of her grandmother and no amount of HSQ where Elena/Katherine, the Salvatores, Caroline, the Lockwoods are concerned is going to make up for that particular aspect of fail. So, get your act together, Show otherwise I might just bail out on you. On the other side, Elena rocks! She rocks so hard that I want to reach through the TV screen and hug her. The only thing stopping me from trying to do so is the slim but very real possibility that I might accidentally hug Katherine instead. And she’d eat me.
LEGEND OF THE SEEKER S2 (spoilers all the way!): I got the DVD long ago as my way of contributing to the Save The Seeker campaign but I couldn’t bring myself to watch it because I was so heartbroken over the cancellation. Well, I got over that. And it was so much better on re-watching. I remember being slightly irritated by ‘Walter’ which (until the end) I felt was a parody episode to show off Craig Parker’s comedic timing and not advance the plot (shades of ‘Mirror’ in Season 1); but this time around, I LOL’d from beginning to the end. Woobie!Walter is just so adorbs. And Malray really scored lucky finding a friend like that. There were still gaping plot holes and handwaves, large enough to fill a whole essay with - Denee dies how many times again? - but the characters are too adorable for me to care too much :P. I still think Cara’s arc was a wonderful contribution to the show. R/K is the sweetest OTP on screen ever and I love the way Kahlan and Cara are clearly the Lancers to Richard’s Hero. The fight scene in ‘LIGHT’ is still the best Ass-Kicking Fight Scene in the show since Evah. Even though I don’t ship them because I don’t think every cool relationship has to be a romantic one, I love Kahlan/Cara as BFFs. ‘Extinction’ is particularly poignant when you remember what happens next. Talking about which - my only regret is that the creeptastic creep that was Dahlia didn’t just DIAF. Yeah, she and Cara were trained together and yeah, she is just as much a brain-washed victim as any of the other Mord’Sith. Yada yada yada. She tricked Cara, turned her, and continued to serve Darken Rahl even after he was dead. To quote Iroh: she needed to go down. What really kicks is that in the end, she gets rewarded: she never got to be turned into a Mord’Sith. (Shades of Callisto, come to think of it. Mmmm…)
FRINGE (slightly spoilerish but nothing major): Olivia rocks, as always, and the Alt-world is fascinating. But this season would have rocked so much more if the writers didn’t go the whole ‘vagenda’ route with Bolivia. I have thoughts about this and I may write meta.
UNDERCOVERS (no spoilers): I can see why it was cancelled. I think JJ and co. played it too safe and I know why they did so but it ultimately hurt the show. But. But. I still think that if the network/fandom had given it more of a chance, it would have hit its stride eventually.
COVERT AFFAIRS (no spoilers): It was marketed as the new ‘ALIAS’ which is all sorts of wrong because there is no Rambaldi and Annie Walker is not Sydney Bristow. (There Is Only One Sydney Bristow!!!) But. Annie Walker is an interesting character in her own right and even though the show takes pains to show that she is just starting out, there are flashes of brilliance that make the show more than ‘A Year in the Life of the Rookie Agent’. From what I have glimpsed from fringes of fandom, I may be the only person who isn’t shipping Angie (:P). I like them as friends. I’m far keener on Annie/Jai and after Episode 11, I even have a soft spot for Annie/Ben. We’ll see.
CROSS OVER SPECULATION (spoilers? :P): Am I the only one that sees Covert Affairs’s Joan as the grown-up version of The Vampire Diaries’s Caroline in Fringe’s B-universe? And it’s not just the blonde hair. It’s the whole Caroline ‘I am Bossy and will organize not just your life but your country. I can be Catty and don’t ask me a question if you don’t want to know the answer. And my mom taught me how to use a gun since I was 6’ Forbes attitude fast-forward a couple of decades of experience and maturity.
I would love to discuss any of these shows but be careful if you’re not up to date because there might be spoilers in the comments. :D