DRAMA!
Caught up on The Capture 1.2 Toy Soldier
Ron Perlman changes everything! I’d seen a clip on him in the trailer for the series, I saw his name in this epiosde’s credits, and to its credit, forgot all about him until he turned up at the end and American (CIA?) involvement was a thing.
The audience (me) was a step ahead of Shaun (as to asking what did happen to Hannah) and Rachel (making entirely the wrong leap based on video/CCTV footage cropping up). But she eventually got that the security services were up to something and was more willing to discard her theory when given evidence than her subordinates. I mean, there’s footage of her visiting the suspect’s cell and talking to him without his solicitor present - Shaun endeared himself to me there by sticking to demending his phone call because of his daughter and not engaging much. Of course, he didn’t know that his solicitor believed he’d done this horrible thing to his colleague and wouldn’t represent him anymore. Anyway, there was evidence that Rachel broke the rules once the main evidence of the crime was taken away from her.
For much of the episode, because the police didn’t have the doubts that we did over that evidence, we really weren’t in sympathy. If it hand’t been for MI5’s involvement (yes, I was half-suspecting them of taking her although it seemed like an elaborate cover-up and I couldn’t decide whether the cover-up was the main thing and she was collateral damage or the target) one would have thought it was better for missing persons to investigate, because the team were hung up on the incident they thought had been captured, even when the evidence to back it up wasn’t emerging. And yes, ‘the incident’ looked like a horrendous crime. So, Rachel’s team were willing to break rules and ignore her orders (though she kind of does the same, running back to anti-terrorism all the time) - the guy not being willing to listen to the ‘I didn’t see the attack coming’ behavioural science comment. Nadiya kind of being flummoxed by the ex saying Shaun isn’t violent - but he does have a hair-trigger temper.
So, although I thought Shaun was mad to break and enter and leave DNA all over Hannah’s flat, I could see that he didn’t have much other recourse, and at least someone was looking for her properly. He found evidence to suggest that that’s where she’d been taken, but also an agent - was he there as bait for Shaun or other purposes, though? WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO HANNAH?
There was increased use of CCTV footage within the episode that was effective, and the sequence that Shaun remembered or ‘remembered’ was interesting, using footage (of her struggling) that seemed to properly be from his POV (don’t get me started on how shows bodge character POV in flashback because they can’t be bothered to film another version of a scene), not the one we’d seen and then moving to him remembering the CCTV footage. This provoked many questions. Was what we’d seen the first time really what happened, or was it as per the CCTV footage and Shaun had repressed it? Or was he internalising the CCTV footage and was his mind being messed with somehow? The last question was introduced by potential CIA involvement, although it’s not like they had the time and opportunity to mess with his brain. But they had a code name for him and all!
Anyway, the whole scene where Rachel was seeing something different (time delayed?) on screen to what her team were seeing on the ground at the same time made us question everything. (Including the bus CCTV footage.) And whatever these Americans are up to - which is affecting British subjects and the British police force - is on friendly ground, but seems to be supported by the secret services. This is possibly linked to Rachel’s recent terrorism case and Hannah’s work.
!?!?
So, you know, so many questions and just enough doubt to keep one from plumping for one solution. Clever.
In the same way, Rachel and her ex-boss thought they knew the rules, knew the blindspots and could exploit them for their privacy. BUT CAN THEY?
I’ll just end on the contrast between interview rooms Shaun has been in.
And then I watched the Fosse/Verdon finale.
1.8 Providence
It seemed to spin off into even more extreme scenarios, partly building on what we’d seen in past episodes. I don’t just mean the history between characters but Bobby in fantasy stand-up mode coloure Bobby recording himself speaking or speaking at Marty’s funeral. He was making the semi-autobiographical All That Jazz and nobody believed his claim that it wasn’t semi-autobiographical.
The scene I had the most problems with was Annie’s audition to play the lightly fictionalised (by Fosse) version of herseff. Surely it was fantasy. Surely she wouldn’t go up for that (it’s one thing Bobby offering the part of herself to his teenage daughter and not meaning it.) Anyway, it was so cruel.
Crueller still was Nicole watching him film a scene from their recent life. Up to a certain point, it felt that the episode was being split between Bobby, Gwen and Nicole, who had moved out to live with her father (ah, Gwen, thinking she smoked now, when that was the least of it). But the focus narrowed to Bobby and Gwen.
They danced with the story as set up by Marty, about whether ‘Joe’ would realise it was always his ex-wife, because she was always the only creative partner he had (although my slant on this is that it was a loaded partnership and she hit a glass ceiling for ageing actresses and only stepped into assisting the director when it was him). But he refused that scenario in the new film he was coming up with.
But, after we’d seen Gwen’s response to Nicole’s abandonment and the lack of roles being offered to her to consider moving out of NYC, she seemed to fail to make the connection between her telling Bobby that and him offering her Roxy (a part she’d struggled with) on tour. Ron did see the connection, saw Gwen falling for it and had enough. (Dude, finally. Gwen’s underlying bitterness about his having a wife and kids now, when she never gave him the 100% she gave Bobby - well, I was all good for him.)
But then, Gwen did the same thing for Bobby - called him back to her via work - over the Sweet Charity revival. As the countdown to the end came via the title cards, and to the scene we’d seen at the beginning of the show, she talked him into directing a revival, an admission of not moving forward, careerwise, because he was ageing (Williams played the dying scene particularly with the sense of ageing), and an admission that they did their best work together. Her getting to play ‘If they could see me now’ and, yes, the moment between the characters that was a step out of the performance, made me sit at the front of the sofa. (And she was there when he died.)
That blurring of reality and performance was most potent in that scene where Fosse got to replace the actor (Lin-Manuel Miranda playing Tom Selleck??) for one go, in a fictionalised ‘this is your life’ scene on set. And on top of that, it was cut between Gwen dealing with the fallout of her break-up and Nicole dicing with death because she was high.
The text informing us what happened next reinforced both the idea that this show was therapy for Nicole Fosse (still weird to me, mind) and an attempt to rebalance the legacy as presented in the ‘Fosse’ revue, with Verdon’s name being given equal billing here. Got to take your (top) hat off to Williams and Rockwell for their performances, and it was always interesting to see lives that were bound up in musical theatre via the medium of television, mixing the naturalisitic idiom with all kinds of others. Possibly this show could have been made in six episodes rather than eight, though.
This entry was originally posted at https://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/399431.html.
Ron Perlman changes everything! I’d seen a clip on him in the trailer for the series, I saw his name in this epiosde’s credits, and to its credit, forgot all about him until he turned up at the end and American (CIA?) involvement was a thing.
The audience (me) was a step ahead of Shaun (as to asking what did happen to Hannah) and Rachel (making entirely the wrong leap based on video/CCTV footage cropping up). But she eventually got that the security services were up to something and was more willing to discard her theory when given evidence than her subordinates. I mean, there’s footage of her visiting the suspect’s cell and talking to him without his solicitor present - Shaun endeared himself to me there by sticking to demending his phone call because of his daughter and not engaging much. Of course, he didn’t know that his solicitor believed he’d done this horrible thing to his colleague and wouldn’t represent him anymore. Anyway, there was evidence that Rachel broke the rules once the main evidence of the crime was taken away from her.
For much of the episode, because the police didn’t have the doubts that we did over that evidence, we really weren’t in sympathy. If it hand’t been for MI5’s involvement (yes, I was half-suspecting them of taking her although it seemed like an elaborate cover-up and I couldn’t decide whether the cover-up was the main thing and she was collateral damage or the target) one would have thought it was better for missing persons to investigate, because the team were hung up on the incident they thought had been captured, even when the evidence to back it up wasn’t emerging. And yes, ‘the incident’ looked like a horrendous crime. So, Rachel’s team were willing to break rules and ignore her orders (though she kind of does the same, running back to anti-terrorism all the time) - the guy not being willing to listen to the ‘I didn’t see the attack coming’ behavioural science comment. Nadiya kind of being flummoxed by the ex saying Shaun isn’t violent - but he does have a hair-trigger temper.
So, although I thought Shaun was mad to break and enter and leave DNA all over Hannah’s flat, I could see that he didn’t have much other recourse, and at least someone was looking for her properly. He found evidence to suggest that that’s where she’d been taken, but also an agent - was he there as bait for Shaun or other purposes, though? WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO HANNAH?
There was increased use of CCTV footage within the episode that was effective, and the sequence that Shaun remembered or ‘remembered’ was interesting, using footage (of her struggling) that seemed to properly be from his POV (don’t get me started on how shows bodge character POV in flashback because they can’t be bothered to film another version of a scene), not the one we’d seen and then moving to him remembering the CCTV footage. This provoked many questions. Was what we’d seen the first time really what happened, or was it as per the CCTV footage and Shaun had repressed it? Or was he internalising the CCTV footage and was his mind being messed with somehow? The last question was introduced by potential CIA involvement, although it’s not like they had the time and opportunity to mess with his brain. But they had a code name for him and all!
Anyway, the whole scene where Rachel was seeing something different (time delayed?) on screen to what her team were seeing on the ground at the same time made us question everything. (Including the bus CCTV footage.) And whatever these Americans are up to - which is affecting British subjects and the British police force - is on friendly ground, but seems to be supported by the secret services. This is possibly linked to Rachel’s recent terrorism case and Hannah’s work.
!?!?
So, you know, so many questions and just enough doubt to keep one from plumping for one solution. Clever.
In the same way, Rachel and her ex-boss thought they knew the rules, knew the blindspots and could exploit them for their privacy. BUT CAN THEY?
I’ll just end on the contrast between interview rooms Shaun has been in.
And then I watched the Fosse/Verdon finale.
1.8 Providence
It seemed to spin off into even more extreme scenarios, partly building on what we’d seen in past episodes. I don’t just mean the history between characters but Bobby in fantasy stand-up mode coloure Bobby recording himself speaking or speaking at Marty’s funeral. He was making the semi-autobiographical All That Jazz and nobody believed his claim that it wasn’t semi-autobiographical.
The scene I had the most problems with was Annie’s audition to play the lightly fictionalised (by Fosse) version of herseff. Surely it was fantasy. Surely she wouldn’t go up for that (it’s one thing Bobby offering the part of herself to his teenage daughter and not meaning it.) Anyway, it was so cruel.
Crueller still was Nicole watching him film a scene from their recent life. Up to a certain point, it felt that the episode was being split between Bobby, Gwen and Nicole, who had moved out to live with her father (ah, Gwen, thinking she smoked now, when that was the least of it). But the focus narrowed to Bobby and Gwen.
They danced with the story as set up by Marty, about whether ‘Joe’ would realise it was always his ex-wife, because she was always the only creative partner he had (although my slant on this is that it was a loaded partnership and she hit a glass ceiling for ageing actresses and only stepped into assisting the director when it was him). But he refused that scenario in the new film he was coming up with.
But, after we’d seen Gwen’s response to Nicole’s abandonment and the lack of roles being offered to her to consider moving out of NYC, she seemed to fail to make the connection between her telling Bobby that and him offering her Roxy (a part she’d struggled with) on tour. Ron did see the connection, saw Gwen falling for it and had enough. (Dude, finally. Gwen’s underlying bitterness about his having a wife and kids now, when she never gave him the 100% she gave Bobby - well, I was all good for him.)
But then, Gwen did the same thing for Bobby - called him back to her via work - over the Sweet Charity revival. As the countdown to the end came via the title cards, and to the scene we’d seen at the beginning of the show, she talked him into directing a revival, an admission of not moving forward, careerwise, because he was ageing (Williams played the dying scene particularly with the sense of ageing), and an admission that they did their best work together. Her getting to play ‘If they could see me now’ and, yes, the moment between the characters that was a step out of the performance, made me sit at the front of the sofa. (And she was there when he died.)
That blurring of reality and performance was most potent in that scene where Fosse got to replace the actor (Lin-Manuel Miranda playing Tom Selleck??) for one go, in a fictionalised ‘this is your life’ scene on set. And on top of that, it was cut between Gwen dealing with the fallout of her break-up and Nicole dicing with death because she was high.
The text informing us what happened next reinforced both the idea that this show was therapy for Nicole Fosse (still weird to me, mind) and an attempt to rebalance the legacy as presented in the ‘Fosse’ revue, with Verdon’s name being given equal billing here. Got to take your (top) hat off to Williams and Rockwell for their performances, and it was always interesting to see lives that were bound up in musical theatre via the medium of television, mixing the naturalisitic idiom with all kinds of others. Possibly this show could have been made in six episodes rather than eight, though.
This entry was originally posted at https://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/399431.html.