South of Nowhere

[murasaki1200]

I liked the premiere a lot better than I was expecting to, mostly because Spencer completely pawned every scene she was in, especially her interactions with Ashley.

Comments

[amluv]

i too enjoyed it a lot more than i thought. i think my favorite scene is the one in the waiting room/ ER and the camera from ash's POV showing characters being consoled by family and then the camera pans to her hand and then from out of frame kyla comes in and envelops her and she brakes down. it's such a great scene because it's very consistent w/ ash's character and we can really see why she is the way she is. i totally think that mandy blows out whoever she's doing scenes w/. but w/ this new dimension to spencer, gabby is becoming a bit better.

it sucks about chelsea but i think she's such a good character w/ a lot of potential. that one line from her MTV interview was pretty damn good, the one she says she never thought she'd spend her sr. year being a statistic, that was very well written.

i pretty much agree w/ the points you have made. aiden is so pretty to look at but he's a big gapping hole of nothingness. and i totally love the spencer/ashley dynamic and there's a certain realness to how their relationship woes played out and again, giving spencer another dimension. i have to say, this ep. makes me feel a lot better about the show since last season i was ready to drop it. i guess we'll see how everything turns out... :)

[murasaki1200]

i think my favorite scene is the one in the waiting room/ ER and the camera from ash's POV showing characters being consoled by family and then the camera pans to her hand and then from out of frame kyla comes in and envelops her and she brakes down. it's such a great scene because it's very consistent w/ ash's character and we can really see why she is the way she is.

This season it looks like Kyla's going to be the 'good' sister. I think my favorite Ashley scene is the conversation with Kyla about how she feels safe with Aiden but Spencer's the one she's in love with. I don't think it's completely consistent with how Aiden always seems to exploit moments when Ashley's struggling in her relationship with Spencer. That doesn't feel particularly safe, but whatever. If we accept the tell from the writers, it explains a lot and is completely consistent with Ashley.

i totally think that mandy blows out whoever she's doing scenes w/

Mandy does do a great job with the angst. I was ready to get really annoyed at Ashley, but Mandy made me buy that she's really struggling. In the scene with Kyla more than in the scene with Spencer actually. I didn't think her dialog was quite right in that. It made her come off a little like an over confident jerk.

it sucks about chelsea but i think she's such a good character w/ a lot of potential.

I think Chelsea's the bomb. I noticed she's moved up in the credits. I hope this means we'll see more of her. She's funny and self aware and seems to have her head screwed on straight.

aiden is so pretty to look at but he's a big gapping hole of nothingness.

ITA. What was that little scene about when he makes fun of Kyla prepping for her GED? Granted I have no idea why Kyla's not finishing high school and planning on going to college afterwards 'cause really, the chances of not becoming a gaping hole of nothingness as you put it are much better if you put something in the ol' bean, but what was that about? was he supposed to be funny or cool? Because he was so not.

And I'm not even going to get into how the big emo scene with Ashley didn't exactly work. There was one Ashden scene last year when Aiden rolls on top of her and tries to kiss her. The camera was totally on Mandy the whole time and she sold the scene beautifully with her facial expression. They should have kept the camera on Mandy in this scene too, but I guess Matt had too much dialog for that to work. So painful. How coud Ashley fall for this? I have to chalk it up to shock over Spencer breaking up with her.

Aiden is so unnecessary and yet I suppose there's always going to be an Aiden gumming up the works. I just don't get why he's supposed to be one of the good guys. He's been totally behaving like a tool.

I was ready to stop watching also, but I'm glad the SoN gang managed to pull it off. I'm going to hang in there for now.