I forget if there were fire-eaters
Love, Lies and Records - Episode 6
Made harder to watch by Ashley Jensen’s bereavement, for whom one can only feel great sympathy.
So, the final episode, and it left with a dangling conversation, not the huge cliffhanger I was expecting. It probably says more about the stuff that I normally consume when I say I was expecting Phillip to kidnap Lucy or for Rick to be involved in a car accident. Kate did not have a full-on panic attack, only a lot of tears. A few things were a bit too convenient/on the nose - everyone, including Rob having to be in the Strongroom of Christmas Sex for the sting, although I liked the boss’s delicate awkwardness over the CCTV screen being there. I get why they wanted it, with Rob now knowing everyone at Kate’s work knew and had known before him about the cheating and for the flashback, although I wasn’t that engaged in the flashback, because I was thinking more about the edit and how TV does pov, and I was never even a media student.
Jamie’s sons conveniently figuring out that their dad was a transvestite/transgender was way too convenient. Also, if they’d talked to their parents about Miss Bell…probably not the take-out I was meant to have, but ech, that was wrapped up too neatly.
Apparently, the ex-footballer was played by an ex-cricketer and he was rather sweet, as was their big bow-out, but, again, Rob and Anne-Marie playing witnesses at a wedding Kate and Rick were conducting was convenient, although I thought they generally ratcheted up the tension beautifully for it to be completely credible that Rob was spoiling for a fight.
The reveals that did work were that the Iranian ‘cousins’ were, in fact, lovers - and the unmarried one being gay had been seeded properly, and Lara being the killer and up to worse than Marcia. I was a little disappointed that Marcia had lost her place as top baddie, because the actress who played her, like Rebecca Front could do it well - Judy has become much less interesting over the series, and mostly served the plot. But I fell for scrappy little Lara, and never saw her as being a manipulative liar, so good rug-pull, Mellor, and even a reversal with Dominika the terrible interpreter helping by translating the letter.
But then Kate is the heroine, and as her personal life spiralled out of control, I really grasped that her superpower is to be able to spin out heartfelt and heart-warming speeches for weddings, citizenship thingies and notices of marriage. The whole bringing in of ‘the first time I saw you…’ stories was deft - the one where she thought Rick was gay and then introduced herself and realised he wasn’t was a corker of a line.
Oh, and this deserves its own paragraph: Rick’s tie! I LOVED Rick’s tie.
So, with the truth out there - and Rob was totally right in the opening scene - Kate lied to her kids and tried holding things together, even though they were so, so frayed. And you wished she’d listen to everyone and be honest. I still thought that if she didn’t know what she wanted, she should try being alone and clearing her head, but of course she wasn’t alone and the responsibility of the kids weighed on her (although Lucy, you precious snowflake, your homework is your business and you deserve your inevitable fail in maths AND LIFE if you don’t work that out soon).
I was in sympathy with both Rob and Rick when it came to arguments - Kate was deflecting and projecting over Anne-Marie, as Rob was obviously just leaning into the ego boost of a woman thinking he was great after finding out his partner of many years had had an affair. Him calling Kate his wife was revealing, although, like Rick (and I) pointed out, she wasn’t. The suggestion that they go on holiday together to try and see what they had left between them made sense from his perspective, but Kate was acting out of instinct and habit, and wanted him to talk to her so she could talk him into returning and acting like things had changed so enormously, which was no longer a tactic that would work.
Meanwhile Rich, lovely Rick, was trying to throw down ultimatums, while Kate was still telling him (and Jamie) everything, some of which was hurtful. So, he was willing to go to the other end of England to get away and nurse his broken heart (and keep doing this thing he was good at). I loved the way he discussed Elle, although Kate’s kids aren’t adults and need her differently, and he wasn’t around when Elle was a child and is her birth father, Kate is using them as an excuse for working out her feelings.
Without knowing about the unsent text, between the up and down messages, he got hope that Kate and Rob were done, but it evaporated by the end of the episode. He rightly told her to stop being nasty to him to push him away (I paraphrase, but it was a ‘finally’ moment) and generally showed more spine along with the puppy-dog heart eyes. But, there was hope - Kate hadn’t needed to bring him along to the beautiful Abbey to fake officiate - and then we got the ‘are you sure you should be driving after a day of getting punched in the face and in THE HEART?’ scene with the overly dramatic music, and finally, after he hadn’t stayed, Kate dimly realised that she might have left the wrong plate drop in her attempt to keep all the plates spinning, and instead of an unsent text, we got the beginning of a phone conversation.
I felt very sorry for Anna who was dragged into Kate’s personal stuff again by giving Rick somewhere to stay.
As ever, this was crammed full of developments, some of which worked better than others. Can Mellor spin out another series (if and when Jensen is up for it)? I mean, if Kate does shack up with Rick, there’ll be massive ramifications on the homeward front. I think it depends on whether Mellor can come up with a professional plot that brings in the police on the scale of the fake marriage/modern slavery/marriage one. Certainly the little vignettes of marriages, citizenship ceremonies and deaths offer so much rich material - and the link that Talia’s father was the one who’d saved a twin was nice (let’s just try to quash the polite surprise that a surgeon begat Talia, because even if a lot of her mistakes are down to being young and inexperienced…still, she’s empathetic like all of Kate’s staff are in the main.)
In other news, I am so glad that Pitch Perfect 3 is much better than Pitch Perfect 2 led us to believe it would be.
Three things:
It sacrifices things I thought were hard nos (breaking up Beca/Jesse) for the funny and the characterisation of the Bellas. Rightly so.
I didn’t know I needed comedy action scenes featuring Rebel Wilson, but I did. And I got two and now I want a Spy 2, where Wilson plays Susan’s protégé. So, let’s add that to the list of sequels I want that will never get made.
John Lithgow’s Australian accent sometimes sounds like Dick van Dyke’s Cockney accent, bless, but you forgive him, because the film takes a squint at daughters/fathers.
As for the trailers, there are many films I’m looking forward to seeing in 2018, Father Figures is not one of them. Every single frame was a case of ‘Why, Owen Wilson, WHY?’
This entry was originally posted at https://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/309296.html.
Made harder to watch by Ashley Jensen’s bereavement, for whom one can only feel great sympathy.
So, the final episode, and it left with a dangling conversation, not the huge cliffhanger I was expecting. It probably says more about the stuff that I normally consume when I say I was expecting Phillip to kidnap Lucy or for Rick to be involved in a car accident. Kate did not have a full-on panic attack, only a lot of tears. A few things were a bit too convenient/on the nose - everyone, including Rob having to be in the Strongroom of Christmas Sex for the sting, although I liked the boss’s delicate awkwardness over the CCTV screen being there. I get why they wanted it, with Rob now knowing everyone at Kate’s work knew and had known before him about the cheating and for the flashback, although I wasn’t that engaged in the flashback, because I was thinking more about the edit and how TV does pov, and I was never even a media student.
Jamie’s sons conveniently figuring out that their dad was a transvestite/transgender was way too convenient. Also, if they’d talked to their parents about Miss Bell…probably not the take-out I was meant to have, but ech, that was wrapped up too neatly.
Apparently, the ex-footballer was played by an ex-cricketer and he was rather sweet, as was their big bow-out, but, again, Rob and Anne-Marie playing witnesses at a wedding Kate and Rick were conducting was convenient, although I thought they generally ratcheted up the tension beautifully for it to be completely credible that Rob was spoiling for a fight.
The reveals that did work were that the Iranian ‘cousins’ were, in fact, lovers - and the unmarried one being gay had been seeded properly, and Lara being the killer and up to worse than Marcia. I was a little disappointed that Marcia had lost her place as top baddie, because the actress who played her, like Rebecca Front could do it well - Judy has become much less interesting over the series, and mostly served the plot. But I fell for scrappy little Lara, and never saw her as being a manipulative liar, so good rug-pull, Mellor, and even a reversal with Dominika the terrible interpreter helping by translating the letter.
But then Kate is the heroine, and as her personal life spiralled out of control, I really grasped that her superpower is to be able to spin out heartfelt and heart-warming speeches for weddings, citizenship thingies and notices of marriage. The whole bringing in of ‘the first time I saw you…’ stories was deft - the one where she thought Rick was gay and then introduced herself and realised he wasn’t was a corker of a line.
Oh, and this deserves its own paragraph: Rick’s tie! I LOVED Rick’s tie.
So, with the truth out there - and Rob was totally right in the opening scene - Kate lied to her kids and tried holding things together, even though they were so, so frayed. And you wished she’d listen to everyone and be honest. I still thought that if she didn’t know what she wanted, she should try being alone and clearing her head, but of course she wasn’t alone and the responsibility of the kids weighed on her (although Lucy, you precious snowflake, your homework is your business and you deserve your inevitable fail in maths AND LIFE if you don’t work that out soon).
I was in sympathy with both Rob and Rick when it came to arguments - Kate was deflecting and projecting over Anne-Marie, as Rob was obviously just leaning into the ego boost of a woman thinking he was great after finding out his partner of many years had had an affair. Him calling Kate his wife was revealing, although, like Rick (and I) pointed out, she wasn’t. The suggestion that they go on holiday together to try and see what they had left between them made sense from his perspective, but Kate was acting out of instinct and habit, and wanted him to talk to her so she could talk him into returning and acting like things had changed so enormously, which was no longer a tactic that would work.
Meanwhile Rich, lovely Rick, was trying to throw down ultimatums, while Kate was still telling him (and Jamie) everything, some of which was hurtful. So, he was willing to go to the other end of England to get away and nurse his broken heart (and keep doing this thing he was good at). I loved the way he discussed Elle, although Kate’s kids aren’t adults and need her differently, and he wasn’t around when Elle was a child and is her birth father, Kate is using them as an excuse for working out her feelings.
Without knowing about the unsent text, between the up and down messages, he got hope that Kate and Rob were done, but it evaporated by the end of the episode. He rightly told her to stop being nasty to him to push him away (I paraphrase, but it was a ‘finally’ moment) and generally showed more spine along with the puppy-dog heart eyes. But, there was hope - Kate hadn’t needed to bring him along to the beautiful Abbey to fake officiate - and then we got the ‘are you sure you should be driving after a day of getting punched in the face and in THE HEART?’ scene with the overly dramatic music, and finally, after he hadn’t stayed, Kate dimly realised that she might have left the wrong plate drop in her attempt to keep all the plates spinning, and instead of an unsent text, we got the beginning of a phone conversation.
I felt very sorry for Anna who was dragged into Kate’s personal stuff again by giving Rick somewhere to stay.
As ever, this was crammed full of developments, some of which worked better than others. Can Mellor spin out another series (if and when Jensen is up for it)? I mean, if Kate does shack up with Rick, there’ll be massive ramifications on the homeward front. I think it depends on whether Mellor can come up with a professional plot that brings in the police on the scale of the fake marriage/modern slavery/marriage one. Certainly the little vignettes of marriages, citizenship ceremonies and deaths offer so much rich material - and the link that Talia’s father was the one who’d saved a twin was nice (let’s just try to quash the polite surprise that a surgeon begat Talia, because even if a lot of her mistakes are down to being young and inexperienced…still, she’s empathetic like all of Kate’s staff are in the main.)
In other news, I am so glad that Pitch Perfect 3 is much better than Pitch Perfect 2 led us to believe it would be.
Three things:
It sacrifices things I thought were hard nos (breaking up Beca/Jesse) for the funny and the characterisation of the Bellas. Rightly so.
I didn’t know I needed comedy action scenes featuring Rebel Wilson, but I did. And I got two and now I want a Spy 2, where Wilson plays Susan’s protégé. So, let’s add that to the list of sequels I want that will never get made.
John Lithgow’s Australian accent sometimes sounds like Dick van Dyke’s Cockney accent, bless, but you forgive him, because the film takes a squint at daughters/fathers.
As for the trailers, there are many films I’m looking forward to seeing in 2018, Father Figures is not one of them. Every single frame was a case of ‘Why, Owen Wilson, WHY?’
This entry was originally posted at https://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/309296.html.