My rant. Let me show you it.
My apologies to the friends who have been concerned about the sudden appearance of a hiatus sign hanging up in my journal. All is well - I just needed a few days away from LJ to mull a few things over - and I'm sorry if I worried you.
So, I want to talk about Sarah Wayne Callies. There will be spoilers, and there will be swearing and bitchiness. Please be warned that I've been through, as they say, interesting times over the last few days, and I'm not exactly mincing my words. These are my personal thoughts, I don't mind if I'm the only person who agrees with me and while I'm quite sure lots of people will disagree with me, I'm not really interested in debating how I feel with anyone. If you don't feel like reading this, please feel free to skip over it. These comments are not aimed at anyone apart from the people I mention by name. Apologies to the friend who already had to hear most of this rant by email already today.
I am very, very angry about Sara's demise.
I am very, very angry about the 'spin doctoring' that I see in that interview with TPTB at Ask Ausiello.
I think that chopping off the head of a supposedly beloved and 'respected' character is a huge slap in the face and a deliberate dig at the actress.
I think the abandonment of a relationship that these very same writers have been building up for the two years is a slap in the face to both WM and SWC and the fans.
I think that Nick Santora is a complete and utter tool/wanker/dickhead to have deliberately misled the fans on his little vanity thread on the Prison Break 'buff' board (Fans of Sara, keep watching! Don't listen to the rumours! We'll be seeing Sara again soon!) and is now running around in circles trying to cover his ass saying that the writers had nothing to do with the idea to kill her off. My blood, it doth boil.
I think that Auisello is a catty little bitch who is showing his misogynistic tendencies with gusto.
I think that SWC is a very classy lady and she has my undying admiration.
I think that Wentworth Miller is a true gentleman and an amazingly loyal friend.
I think that this show ended for me when Michael undid the handcuffs on his brother's wrist at the (almost) end of #222.
I think that Brett Ratner should have stuck around and made sure that his dream project stayed on track.
Finally, I think that these two people say what I'm trying to say much better than I ever could.
Lillyland on TWoP:
I love men just as much as the next gal and someone like me can find no better place than a show like PB. I mean let's face it, PB is like the 'Target' of testosterone, there's a little something here for everyone. But it was the characters like Sucre, Westmoreland, Haywire and Sara that brought balance to the show. Sucre, for Nolasco's portrayal of a dim-witted, good-hearted, love-sick puppy dog - Haywire, for Mitchell's all-around craziness and comic relief - Westmoreland, for Watson's wisdom and overall good-hearted nature and of course Sarah Wayne-Callies.
Dr. Sara Tancredi wasn't just the pretty face of PB but the level-headed, compassionate brainiac with a bit of a past. Sarah Wayne Callies gave Dr. Tancredi strength, depth and respectability through seamless acting and above all, she was always true to the character.
Of these four characters only one is still standing and Prison Break is terribly unbalanced for it. What's more disturbing to me is that the only two major female characters to appear on this show died the most horrific deaths of anyone to date. Dismemberment and decapitation? Could they have disgraced these characters any more? I actually felt bad for Nurse Katie when she was left behind at Fox River, but at least she got to keep all her body parts. Errr sorry, got a little off track!
I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Sarah Wayne-Callies for her portrayal of Dr. Sara Tancredi. I love what you did with her character and will greatly miss her. Good luck with your family and good job preserving the integrity of the character you created, because as of last night's episode, this show end for me with Season 2.
ShutUpRob @ Ask Ausiello:
As soon as Lincoln opened the box and they showed Gwyneth Paltrow's head there, I deleted the show from my DVR.
This is an ugly, misogynistic show where the only major likable female characters (Veronica, Sara) get killed off and the rest of the major female characters (the former President, Susan B. Anthony) are irredeemably corrupt.
What we've got here is a show that is clearly in love with what's known in comics as "Women in Refrigerators Syndrome" (after an issue of Green Lantern in which the title character's girlfriend was murdered and stashed there). (see URL: http://www.unheardtaunts.com/wir )
Before someone points out that C-Note's wife and Sucre's Maricruz are likable characters (and I don't disagree with that assertion), they aren't point of view characters as both Veronica and Sara were and the President and Susan B. Anthony have already been, and their parts are/were too small besides. And if we're going to go into the smaller roles, we've got LJ's mother, who was killed off and Michael's Russian "wife," who turned on them at the last minute. Consequently even in the minor female roles, the show is depicting women in no other terms than The Virgin/Whore Dichotomy.
If it weren't for the actors clearly trying their best to give the show a dignity it doesn't deserve, I'd be thinking, "God, to think I wasted two years on this disgusting show."
As far as I'm concerned, the show ended last season. Hope they can get Callies back to do a special separately-sold alternate version of the season 2 finale where Mahone, T-Bag and Bellick are killed off and Michael, Sara, Linc and LJ sail off into the sunset 'cause there's certainly no point in either watching the show further, much less buying season 3 on DVD next summer.
-----------------
And here's my reaction to Olmstead's interview:
IMO, Olmstead dug himself unfathomably deep by portraying himself as totally ignorant of how the show is even more misogynistic than it is simply sadistically misanthropic.
Unlike other posters, I'm not going to blame Sarah Wayne Callies for anything. She got pregnant, she's had her baby, she's nesting -- it's not up to her to decide in any way, shape or form how the showrunners decide to write her out of the show. She has no creative input or responsibility by nature of her being an actor rather than a producer or writer.
Instead, it's Omstead's responsibility as EP to be aware of the mere content of all of themes and motifs that his show is using. Yes, we see the many byzantine ways that the government is corrupt. Yes, we see that the Brothers are each quite crafty in their own ways. Yes, T-Bag is a snake who, frankly, should have been killed off last season. Yes, Drugs Make You Do Bad Things, as Mahone's simplistic arc boils down to. And yes, prison life is brutal and can even be more brutal than most of us have ever imagined.
That's why the brutality the show displays toward women is all the more disgusting, because it reveals how cynical and how vile and how nihilistic an attitude the creators of the show have toward existence. So far now, if you're a likable, major female character (ie: a viewpoint character), you get killed off and if you're a minor female character, if you don't get killed off, you get swallowed up by the corruption anyway.
Oh yeah, and then there's the lame excuse that boils down to "all we could think of to move the story on without her was to kill her off." I've got to say that that's Olmstead displaying an even more cavalier attitude toward characters than 24 has.
So here we have it: Callies has a baby and doesn't want to commit to further episodes of the show but is nevertheless dismayed that they killed the character off. Sounds to me like Callies more than anything else wanted to come back to the show but couldn't give them an answer as to *when* she'd be ready to come back. That means that the most efficient option is to keep the character's fate open *until* she says, "Okay, write me back in." I mean, we've *already* had two years of wheel-spinning regarding the fates of one character or another anyway (most recently, Maricruz), so there's no reason that they couldn't have just had Sara's fate up in the air until the very last episode of the series if even just that were to be all that they'd be able to get her for. After all, the show is basically a mash-up of The Fugitive and The Great Escape anyway, so there's no reason why Sara shouldn't have and couldn't have been made the MacGuffin of Michael's half of the series. Heck, even Jessica Biel agreed to go back to Seventh Heaven for a guest appearance when they *thought* that the tenth-season finale of that show was going to be the real finale that it should have been.
So, in essence, the destruction of the show is based in first the misogynistic brutalization of the female characters in the show and second in the impatience of the show creators to find a solution to writing Callies out that didn't further the misogyny of the show. Or else in the show creators' obliviousness to the impression that they've created that all they know how to do with likable female characters is kill them off.
I was hoping that Olmstead would have a presented a better reason than "we couldn't think of anything else that fit what we had planned" or, in essence, "We give up," but it's such an anticlimax to read that that's all that he had. Expediency is simply not a viable excuse when a show has far more options than the creator likes to allege that he does, given that the nature of the serial form presents opportunities to do things other than to repeat the least excusable motifs over and over again -- especially not when that motif is killing off intelligent, likable women.
Given the reputation that the show has had regarding its brutality among a growing segment of its audience over the past season and a half -- a reputation that I had tried to debunk a few times on Usenet, btw -- I was hoping that Olmstead would have a better excuse than creative bankruptcy to defend what may be unintentional misogyny, but which is misogyny nonetheless.
And to gild the putrid lily by making it a reference to Se7en? I mean, *come on,* you're not making lemonade out of a lemon by doing that. You're making yellow fluid that comes from someplace very else.
-- Rob
So, yeah. What those two very elequent people said.
The irony is, of course, that I am so angry that I wrote something today, the first thing I've written in over a week. Once I've got this post out of my system, I'll go proof-read it for typos I may have missed in my blind rage. *snerks*
To the lovely people who emailed me asking if I was going to keep writing, the answer is (after a few days of deliberation) a definite yes. I suspect the words Alternate Universe are going to take on a whole new meaning.
So, I want to talk about Sarah Wayne Callies. There will be spoilers, and there will be swearing and bitchiness. Please be warned that I've been through, as they say, interesting times over the last few days, and I'm not exactly mincing my words. These are my personal thoughts, I don't mind if I'm the only person who agrees with me and while I'm quite sure lots of people will disagree with me, I'm not really interested in debating how I feel with anyone. If you don't feel like reading this, please feel free to skip over it. These comments are not aimed at anyone apart from the people I mention by name. Apologies to the friend who already had to hear most of this rant by email already today.
I am very, very angry about Sara's demise.
I am very, very angry about the 'spin doctoring' that I see in that interview with TPTB at Ask Ausiello.
I think that chopping off the head of a supposedly beloved and 'respected' character is a huge slap in the face and a deliberate dig at the actress.
I think the abandonment of a relationship that these very same writers have been building up for the two years is a slap in the face to both WM and SWC and the fans.
I think that Nick Santora is a complete and utter tool/wanker/dickhead to have deliberately misled the fans on his little vanity thread on the Prison Break 'buff' board (Fans of Sara, keep watching! Don't listen to the rumours! We'll be seeing Sara again soon!) and is now running around in circles trying to cover his ass saying that the writers had nothing to do with the idea to kill her off. My blood, it doth boil.
I think that Auisello is a catty little bitch who is showing his misogynistic tendencies with gusto.
I think that SWC is a very classy lady and she has my undying admiration.
I think that Wentworth Miller is a true gentleman and an amazingly loyal friend.
I think that this show ended for me when Michael undid the handcuffs on his brother's wrist at the (almost) end of #222.
I think that Brett Ratner should have stuck around and made sure that his dream project stayed on track.
Finally, I think that these two people say what I'm trying to say much better than I ever could.
Lillyland on TWoP:
I love men just as much as the next gal and someone like me can find no better place than a show like PB. I mean let's face it, PB is like the 'Target' of testosterone, there's a little something here for everyone. But it was the characters like Sucre, Westmoreland, Haywire and Sara that brought balance to the show. Sucre, for Nolasco's portrayal of a dim-witted, good-hearted, love-sick puppy dog - Haywire, for Mitchell's all-around craziness and comic relief - Westmoreland, for Watson's wisdom and overall good-hearted nature and of course Sarah Wayne-Callies.
Dr. Sara Tancredi wasn't just the pretty face of PB but the level-headed, compassionate brainiac with a bit of a past. Sarah Wayne Callies gave Dr. Tancredi strength, depth and respectability through seamless acting and above all, she was always true to the character.
Of these four characters only one is still standing and Prison Break is terribly unbalanced for it. What's more disturbing to me is that the only two major female characters to appear on this show died the most horrific deaths of anyone to date. Dismemberment and decapitation? Could they have disgraced these characters any more? I actually felt bad for Nurse Katie when she was left behind at Fox River, but at least she got to keep all her body parts. Errr sorry, got a little off track!
I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Sarah Wayne-Callies for her portrayal of Dr. Sara Tancredi. I love what you did with her character and will greatly miss her. Good luck with your family and good job preserving the integrity of the character you created, because as of last night's episode, this show end for me with Season 2.
ShutUpRob @ Ask Ausiello:
As soon as Lincoln opened the box and they showed Gwyneth Paltrow's head there, I deleted the show from my DVR.
This is an ugly, misogynistic show where the only major likable female characters (Veronica, Sara) get killed off and the rest of the major female characters (the former President, Susan B. Anthony) are irredeemably corrupt.
What we've got here is a show that is clearly in love with what's known in comics as "Women in Refrigerators Syndrome" (after an issue of Green Lantern in which the title character's girlfriend was murdered and stashed there). (see URL: http://www.unheardtaunts.com/wir )
Before someone points out that C-Note's wife and Sucre's Maricruz are likable characters (and I don't disagree with that assertion), they aren't point of view characters as both Veronica and Sara were and the President and Susan B. Anthony have already been, and their parts are/were too small besides. And if we're going to go into the smaller roles, we've got LJ's mother, who was killed off and Michael's Russian "wife," who turned on them at the last minute. Consequently even in the minor female roles, the show is depicting women in no other terms than The Virgin/Whore Dichotomy.
If it weren't for the actors clearly trying their best to give the show a dignity it doesn't deserve, I'd be thinking, "God, to think I wasted two years on this disgusting show."
As far as I'm concerned, the show ended last season. Hope they can get Callies back to do a special separately-sold alternate version of the season 2 finale where Mahone, T-Bag and Bellick are killed off and Michael, Sara, Linc and LJ sail off into the sunset 'cause there's certainly no point in either watching the show further, much less buying season 3 on DVD next summer.
-----------------
And here's my reaction to Olmstead's interview:
IMO, Olmstead dug himself unfathomably deep by portraying himself as totally ignorant of how the show is even more misogynistic than it is simply sadistically misanthropic.
Unlike other posters, I'm not going to blame Sarah Wayne Callies for anything. She got pregnant, she's had her baby, she's nesting -- it's not up to her to decide in any way, shape or form how the showrunners decide to write her out of the show. She has no creative input or responsibility by nature of her being an actor rather than a producer or writer.
Instead, it's Omstead's responsibility as EP to be aware of the mere content of all of themes and motifs that his show is using. Yes, we see the many byzantine ways that the government is corrupt. Yes, we see that the Brothers are each quite crafty in their own ways. Yes, T-Bag is a snake who, frankly, should have been killed off last season. Yes, Drugs Make You Do Bad Things, as Mahone's simplistic arc boils down to. And yes, prison life is brutal and can even be more brutal than most of us have ever imagined.
That's why the brutality the show displays toward women is all the more disgusting, because it reveals how cynical and how vile and how nihilistic an attitude the creators of the show have toward existence. So far now, if you're a likable, major female character (ie: a viewpoint character), you get killed off and if you're a minor female character, if you don't get killed off, you get swallowed up by the corruption anyway.
Oh yeah, and then there's the lame excuse that boils down to "all we could think of to move the story on without her was to kill her off." I've got to say that that's Olmstead displaying an even more cavalier attitude toward characters than 24 has.
So here we have it: Callies has a baby and doesn't want to commit to further episodes of the show but is nevertheless dismayed that they killed the character off. Sounds to me like Callies more than anything else wanted to come back to the show but couldn't give them an answer as to *when* she'd be ready to come back. That means that the most efficient option is to keep the character's fate open *until* she says, "Okay, write me back in." I mean, we've *already* had two years of wheel-spinning regarding the fates of one character or another anyway (most recently, Maricruz), so there's no reason that they couldn't have just had Sara's fate up in the air until the very last episode of the series if even just that were to be all that they'd be able to get her for. After all, the show is basically a mash-up of The Fugitive and The Great Escape anyway, so there's no reason why Sara shouldn't have and couldn't have been made the MacGuffin of Michael's half of the series. Heck, even Jessica Biel agreed to go back to Seventh Heaven for a guest appearance when they *thought* that the tenth-season finale of that show was going to be the real finale that it should have been.
So, in essence, the destruction of the show is based in first the misogynistic brutalization of the female characters in the show and second in the impatience of the show creators to find a solution to writing Callies out that didn't further the misogyny of the show. Or else in the show creators' obliviousness to the impression that they've created that all they know how to do with likable female characters is kill them off.
I was hoping that Olmstead would have a presented a better reason than "we couldn't think of anything else that fit what we had planned" or, in essence, "We give up," but it's such an anticlimax to read that that's all that he had. Expediency is simply not a viable excuse when a show has far more options than the creator likes to allege that he does, given that the nature of the serial form presents opportunities to do things other than to repeat the least excusable motifs over and over again -- especially not when that motif is killing off intelligent, likable women.
Given the reputation that the show has had regarding its brutality among a growing segment of its audience over the past season and a half -- a reputation that I had tried to debunk a few times on Usenet, btw -- I was hoping that Olmstead would have a better excuse than creative bankruptcy to defend what may be unintentional misogyny, but which is misogyny nonetheless.
And to gild the putrid lily by making it a reference to Se7en? I mean, *come on,* you're not making lemonade out of a lemon by doing that. You're making yellow fluid that comes from someplace very else.
-- Rob
So, yeah. What those two very elequent people said.
The irony is, of course, that I am so angry that I wrote something today, the first thing I've written in over a week. Once I've got this post out of my system, I'll go proof-read it for typos I may have missed in my blind rage. *snerks*
To the lovely people who emailed me asking if I was going to keep writing, the answer is (after a few days of deliberation) a definite yes. I suspect the words Alternate Universe are going to take on a whole new meaning.