lots of television catchup post
THE ORIGINALS
IT HAD BBY MIKAELSONS AAAAAAAH. <333 I love how well the show gets how people get acclimated to toxic environments? Elijah gets conditioned to it and terrorized into falling in line; Rebekah sees it with newish eyes and is shocked, makes a wonderfully brave response (for which Elijah would have gotten his ass kicked and Klaus would have just gotten killed) and Elijah teaches her how to pretend until she's actually convinced herself that Mikael isn't so bad, that all he'll do is yell at Klaus to be nice to Rebekah, and not kill Klaus first and make her and Elijah watch before turning on them.
I don't know how I feel about the character's exit? Rebekah getting out is good for Rebekah but sad for me, lol. Presumably she'll be back now and again, which makes sense. I know it's controversial with Claire Holt leaving, but I feel like....Rebekah got what she wanted out of New Orleans, you know? Enough that she knows she has a home to go back to, that she doesn't have to cling to one of her brothers for fear of losing them all, so she can stand on her own two feet because they're on steady ground for the first time in a thousand years.
Weirdly for a first season, this is a season about letting go. In this case, Klaus letting go of Rebekah was very different from his letting go of Tyler (and even having let Tyler go at all was a big step up for Klaus). They all had to let go of their mother, and symbolically bury Klaus' sin from all those years ago, and then Elijah had to let go of his dream of Celeste and his hope for Hayley.
TVD
This character's exit, however, I feel entirely too fine about. Partially that's because I don't actually buy that she was sucked into hell for being the objective worst? I think she's in some Traveler holding cell paying off the "debt" she and Nadia owed to the witch who put her into Elena's body. Which means she'll probably be back at some point. ("Yay," she said with totally convincing enthusiasm.)
Stefan killing Katherine was interesting to me, in context of the way he was also the one who did Silas in? I feel like Stefan's arc this season has been him turning his trauma outward at appropriate targets, rather than either turning it inward as self-loathing or flinging it out at the world as the Ripper. It'll be really interesting to see how he reacts to Damon and Elena both having the ripper virus.
I continue to be really creeped out by how Tyler's emotional state is apparently supposed to ~pass muster, though I do think the show is doing a good job setting it up to be sketch. Like, "no excuses" for having felt the wrong feeling after asking THREE TIMES to be left alone? Bro, you don't need an excuse for that. And it's admirable that he wants to err on the side of controlling himself in the interests of breaking the cycle, but it's also getting difficult to tell the difference between control and unhealthy suppression, particularly in this environment where Caroline is digging in and moralizing her desire for him to continue with the unhealthy suppression, partly because she's projecting her own stuff and partly because Stefan is egging her on to project at Tyler rather than at him. But it is all tangled up in a really interesting, believable way.
Supernatural
I did like #thinman even if I didn't have anything to say about it? I think it was blunt enough that the only people who didn't get the point are the ones who don't want to get the point. I will say that I think it's realistic that Sam was starting to waver, so I liked how he saw the parallels and used them to bolster his resolve. OH, and I really liked the bit at the beginning where Dean tried to entrap him with the "you probably don't want to come on the case." Like, he wanted Sam to beg to come along and act like he wanted to be around Dean, or to say no and therefore blur the lines between work and personal (and therefore feel like he has to let Dean off the hook next time a case really does require both of them.)
Hannibal
When I started watching Hannibal I said that I liked it but didn't quite love it, and I'm not sure if that's still true. This season I really do want to watch every episode as it airs, which tells me that the season is more effective for me, to a point where I actually found the season premiere difficult to watch. Probably that sounds bizarre about Hannibal, but I can distance from the ostentatiously gory murders because they're so unreal. But watching Will's trust in his own mind crumble...that pushes some buttons.
And OH, the way the people around him talk to him still makes my skin crawl. As Jack is rethinking his steamrolling (I might actually like Jack this season?? YOU'RE STILL ON NOTICE, BIG GUY), Alana is undermining Will with her insidiously good intentions. I mean, I actually do think she means well, but she is totally prioritizing her feelings about Will and her own self-image over both Will and the truth. She lectures him on his ~~responsibility for the crimes in the season premiere because she's uncomfortable with his insistence on his innocence. Then in the next episode she's uncomfortable with his apparent suffering so she tries to hold his hand and convince him that it's not his fault. And then in this most recent episode she's so stressed out about how the trial is going that she talks herself into thinking that being convicted of capital murder would be less frightening for him, because she wants the prospect of a conviction to be less frightening for her.
But as difficult as that is to watch, it might be the strongest example of one of the many interesting things this very interesting show does so insightfully, which is to turn a lot of disability-related tropes inside out. Alana the ~~sweet overinvolved neurotypical lady~~ is not a bad person, but she's not the center of the story, she's not even been much of a help to Will. His interactions with his attorney are the exact opposite of Primal Fear (Richard Gere starts out as the salesman-type Will's lawyer is, but unlike the movie, (a) he does come around to righteous belief and (b) he's been had by the lying not-really-crazy client, unlike Will who really is innocent but nobody of influence here, including his attorney, gets it). Will isn't the precious little puppy someone wants to save that he would be in an Inspirational Disabled Person narrative, he's (like autistic people IRL are all too likely to be) someone who's unjustifiably feared and therefore unjustly persecuted because of his difference.
This entry was originally posted at http://pocochina.dreamwidth.org/329690.html. Leave a comment here, or there using OpenID.
IT HAD BBY MIKAELSONS AAAAAAAH. <333 I love how well the show gets how people get acclimated to toxic environments? Elijah gets conditioned to it and terrorized into falling in line; Rebekah sees it with newish eyes and is shocked, makes a wonderfully brave response (for which Elijah would have gotten his ass kicked and Klaus would have just gotten killed) and Elijah teaches her how to pretend until she's actually convinced herself that Mikael isn't so bad, that all he'll do is yell at Klaus to be nice to Rebekah, and not kill Klaus first and make her and Elijah watch before turning on them.
I don't know how I feel about the character's exit? Rebekah getting out is good for Rebekah but sad for me, lol. Presumably she'll be back now and again, which makes sense. I know it's controversial with Claire Holt leaving, but I feel like....Rebekah got what she wanted out of New Orleans, you know? Enough that she knows she has a home to go back to, that she doesn't have to cling to one of her brothers for fear of losing them all, so she can stand on her own two feet because they're on steady ground for the first time in a thousand years.
Weirdly for a first season, this is a season about letting go. In this case, Klaus letting go of Rebekah was very different from his letting go of Tyler (and even having let Tyler go at all was a big step up for Klaus). They all had to let go of their mother, and symbolically bury Klaus' sin from all those years ago, and then Elijah had to let go of his dream of Celeste and his hope for Hayley.
TVD
This character's exit, however, I feel entirely too fine about. Partially that's because I don't actually buy that she was sucked into hell for being the objective worst? I think she's in some Traveler holding cell paying off the "debt" she and Nadia owed to the witch who put her into Elena's body. Which means she'll probably be back at some point. ("Yay," she said with totally convincing enthusiasm.)
Stefan killing Katherine was interesting to me, in context of the way he was also the one who did Silas in? I feel like Stefan's arc this season has been him turning his trauma outward at appropriate targets, rather than either turning it inward as self-loathing or flinging it out at the world as the Ripper. It'll be really interesting to see how he reacts to Damon and Elena both having the ripper virus.
I continue to be really creeped out by how Tyler's emotional state is apparently supposed to ~pass muster, though I do think the show is doing a good job setting it up to be sketch. Like, "no excuses" for having felt the wrong feeling after asking THREE TIMES to be left alone? Bro, you don't need an excuse for that. And it's admirable that he wants to err on the side of controlling himself in the interests of breaking the cycle, but it's also getting difficult to tell the difference between control and unhealthy suppression, particularly in this environment where Caroline is digging in and moralizing her desire for him to continue with the unhealthy suppression, partly because she's projecting her own stuff and partly because Stefan is egging her on to project at Tyler rather than at him. But it is all tangled up in a really interesting, believable way.
Supernatural
I did like #thinman even if I didn't have anything to say about it? I think it was blunt enough that the only people who didn't get the point are the ones who don't want to get the point. I will say that I think it's realistic that Sam was starting to waver, so I liked how he saw the parallels and used them to bolster his resolve. OH, and I really liked the bit at the beginning where Dean tried to entrap him with the "you probably don't want to come on the case." Like, he wanted Sam to beg to come along and act like he wanted to be around Dean, or to say no and therefore blur the lines between work and personal (and therefore feel like he has to let Dean off the hook next time a case really does require both of them.)
Hannibal
When I started watching Hannibal I said that I liked it but didn't quite love it, and I'm not sure if that's still true. This season I really do want to watch every episode as it airs, which tells me that the season is more effective for me, to a point where I actually found the season premiere difficult to watch. Probably that sounds bizarre about Hannibal, but I can distance from the ostentatiously gory murders because they're so unreal. But watching Will's trust in his own mind crumble...that pushes some buttons.
And OH, the way the people around him talk to him still makes my skin crawl. As Jack is rethinking his steamrolling (I might actually like Jack this season?? YOU'RE STILL ON NOTICE, BIG GUY), Alana is undermining Will with her insidiously good intentions. I mean, I actually do think she means well, but she is totally prioritizing her feelings about Will and her own self-image over both Will and the truth. She lectures him on his ~~responsibility for the crimes in the season premiere because she's uncomfortable with his insistence on his innocence. Then in the next episode she's uncomfortable with his apparent suffering so she tries to hold his hand and convince him that it's not his fault. And then in this most recent episode she's so stressed out about how the trial is going that she talks herself into thinking that being convicted of capital murder would be less frightening for him, because she wants the prospect of a conviction to be less frightening for her.
But as difficult as that is to watch, it might be the strongest example of one of the many interesting things this very interesting show does so insightfully, which is to turn a lot of disability-related tropes inside out. Alana the ~~sweet overinvolved neurotypical lady~~ is not a bad person, but she's not the center of the story, she's not even been much of a help to Will. His interactions with his attorney are the exact opposite of Primal Fear (Richard Gere starts out as the salesman-type Will's lawyer is, but unlike the movie, (a) he does come around to righteous belief and (b) he's been had by the lying not-really-crazy client, unlike Will who really is innocent but nobody of influence here, including his attorney, gets it). Will isn't the precious little puppy someone wants to save that he would be in an Inspirational Disabled Person narrative, he's (like autistic people IRL are all too likely to be) someone who's unjustifiably feared and therefore unjustly persecuted because of his difference.
This entry was originally posted at http://pocochina.dreamwidth.org/329690.html. Leave a comment here, or there using OpenID.