Life on Mars, later than everyone else
So far I've seen eps 1-4, and for some reason I'm finding the whole show much harder going than I anticipated. Some notes:
...oh, Life on Mars. What are you doing?
I watched the first two episodes last night. Lots of good things... but, really, did you just put Sam's girlfriend Maya into serious danger, by, like, minute five, for no other reason than to give him motivation? What a waste of Archie Panjabi. (And it's pretty spotty motivation, anyway--since it hardly comes up that she's apparently in mortal peril, and who really *needs* motivation to want to get back to their own time period? Not being stuck in 1973 isn't enough motivation?) Don't they hand out cards about how you're not supposed to do that, yet? And if they don't, shouldn't they start? (If you have, like, six hours to kill, you could go to TvTropes and look up "Disposable Woman," "Stuffed Into the Fridge," and "I Let Gwen Stacy Die.") (Also, um, did Sam just alter time in the very first episode? This had better come back up.)
Also, I watched the behind-the-scenes stuff, and I am *really* not best pleased by the repeated assertions that Sam Tyler has to learn more "humanity" from the show's overtly racist, misogynist, in-fact-just-plain-everything-ist Gene. I can't get on board this whole "Gene lives life to the fullest, unlike Sam" train, where "living life to the full" apparently means insulting and demeaning everyone who isn't just like Gene.
On a related note, the idea that Sam's by-the-book police skills have made him lose touch with his feelings and humanity is just silly. Oh no, he's so forensic and doesn't get mustard all over the evidence! How *will* he ever feel the humanity of the cases? He doesn't know how to "live in the jungle," one of the showrunners/writers says (or possibly the director), which, what? What is so great about guys planting evidence on people and beating people up whenever they feel like it? Maybe it's because I'm deeply suspicious of Gene and people like him, but I'm not hankering for wild-west justice, the Gene-as-sheriff motif they keep bringing up. *He* says that he's never stitched up someone who hasn't deserved it, but--I'm supposed to just trust that, and want Sam to learn something from this man, when he looks at people like me and doesn't see them as people? What does "deserve" mean in this case, besides "Gene thinks they're guilty"? What stops him from thinking someone's guilty because he's got the wrong skin color or accent or happened to be in the wrong place? (Well, actually, the answer to that is supposed to be "the law.")
I haven't mentioned due South in a while, but--this is the kind of thing that people on the show occasionally say *about* Benton Fraser ("Are you human, Fraser?"), but the show is always very careful not to fall into that trap itself. His devotion to the law, to justice and principle, doesn't make him less human. And in fact, he's passionate *about* the law; he loves it. And his by-the-book methods *allow* for deep compassion, or at least understanding, because he always appeals to the thing outside himself instead of making assumptions, and when the evidence doesn't fit, he asks why not. In "White Men Can't Jump to Conclusions," everyone else takes a look at the young Black man from the bad neighborhood who has gunshot residue on his hands, and says, that's it, he must be guilty; people from that neighborhood are just like that. Benton questions the logic, listens to the evidence, lets it tell its full story. I want Sam to be like *that*.
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I continue to watch Life on Mars, and the way it uses female bodies to advance Sam's development or moral decisions is really, really grating on me--in a way that isn't true of something more blatant (like, oh, practically every crime show out there right now, from Law & Order: SVU to Castle*), where it grates, but not in the same way. Most of the time, on the crime drama shows, the crime is not *about* the protagonist(s). They may occasionally over-identify with the victims of the crimes--maybe the young girl reminds Castle of Alexis, say--or they may have gotten into the profession for personal reasons that are reflected in the crimes (as with Olivia Benson's backstory on SVU). But the crimes are not usually positioned *as* a learning experience or a dilemma for the protagonist.
But LoM has done this in every episode so far. Should Sam be like Gene, or like Sam? (And I've already gone on at length about the fact that this very question is insulting to me: what is so good and glorious about Gene?) When Sam tries to solve crimes like a 20th-century boy (okay, 21st, but that's not how the song goes, is it?), people, usually women, get hurt. And then Sam angsts about it. It's always All About Sam--except when there are *men* involved in the crime, apparently, because then the men have their own goals and wants instead of being straight-up passive victims. The men can try to save their mill or provide for their families, and Sam provides the bittersweet gaze of history (yeah, sorry, that mill is totally going under, but it's going to make an awesome block of flats one day), but he's not working out his own issues over their stories in the same way that he does with the women. And that's an episode in which his police method is successful--he solves the crime that no one else could--and no one gets hurt because of his actions. (Someone gets hurt, but it's for being an idiot with a gun.)
This was particularly off-putting in episode four, where the dead woman exists only so that Sam and Gene can have a heart-to-heart about how poor widdle Gene feels so bad about taking bribes, boo hoo hoo--and then turn around and clean up Dodge. The camera looks up at them as they stride into the nightclub, rock theme music blaring; back at the station, it's nothing but applause as they bring in the crooked owner.
But--for me, I couldn't give a toss. Where was all this heroism when it was the cops' turn to actually do their flipping jobs and arrest this man the first time he committed a crime, instead of turning a blind eye and opening a hand for a bribe? I am not all that interested in Gene's "redemption" or the bad cop making good. It's his job to be a good cop. And I don't like my buddy stories with corpses at their heart, thanks.
*I have this weird like-apathy relationship with Castle, in that I sort of wish it were a show about all the same characters hanging out in a coffee shop. Or a show about Castle and his family, which is easily my favorite part. I could not care less about the crimes, most weeks. I am kind of just watching the show for when Castle geeks out about stuff, including his daughter.
...oh, Life on Mars. What are you doing?
I watched the first two episodes last night. Lots of good things... but, really, did you just put Sam's girlfriend Maya into serious danger, by, like, minute five, for no other reason than to give him motivation? What a waste of Archie Panjabi. (And it's pretty spotty motivation, anyway--since it hardly comes up that she's apparently in mortal peril, and who really *needs* motivation to want to get back to their own time period? Not being stuck in 1973 isn't enough motivation?) Don't they hand out cards about how you're not supposed to do that, yet? And if they don't, shouldn't they start? (If you have, like, six hours to kill, you could go to TvTropes and look up "Disposable Woman," "Stuffed Into the Fridge," and "I Let Gwen Stacy Die.") (Also, um, did Sam just alter time in the very first episode? This had better come back up.)
Also, I watched the behind-the-scenes stuff, and I am *really* not best pleased by the repeated assertions that Sam Tyler has to learn more "humanity" from the show's overtly racist, misogynist, in-fact-just-plain-everything-ist Gene. I can't get on board this whole "Gene lives life to the fullest, unlike Sam" train, where "living life to the full" apparently means insulting and demeaning everyone who isn't just like Gene.
On a related note, the idea that Sam's by-the-book police skills have made him lose touch with his feelings and humanity is just silly. Oh no, he's so forensic and doesn't get mustard all over the evidence! How *will* he ever feel the humanity of the cases? He doesn't know how to "live in the jungle," one of the showrunners/writers says (or possibly the director), which, what? What is so great about guys planting evidence on people and beating people up whenever they feel like it? Maybe it's because I'm deeply suspicious of Gene and people like him, but I'm not hankering for wild-west justice, the Gene-as-sheriff motif they keep bringing up. *He* says that he's never stitched up someone who hasn't deserved it, but--I'm supposed to just trust that, and want Sam to learn something from this man, when he looks at people like me and doesn't see them as people? What does "deserve" mean in this case, besides "Gene thinks they're guilty"? What stops him from thinking someone's guilty because he's got the wrong skin color or accent or happened to be in the wrong place? (Well, actually, the answer to that is supposed to be "the law.")
I haven't mentioned due South in a while, but--this is the kind of thing that people on the show occasionally say *about* Benton Fraser ("Are you human, Fraser?"), but the show is always very careful not to fall into that trap itself. His devotion to the law, to justice and principle, doesn't make him less human. And in fact, he's passionate *about* the law; he loves it. And his by-the-book methods *allow* for deep compassion, or at least understanding, because he always appeals to the thing outside himself instead of making assumptions, and when the evidence doesn't fit, he asks why not. In "White Men Can't Jump to Conclusions," everyone else takes a look at the young Black man from the bad neighborhood who has gunshot residue on his hands, and says, that's it, he must be guilty; people from that neighborhood are just like that. Benton questions the logic, listens to the evidence, lets it tell its full story. I want Sam to be like *that*.
-----
I continue to watch Life on Mars, and the way it uses female bodies to advance Sam's development or moral decisions is really, really grating on me--in a way that isn't true of something more blatant (like, oh, practically every crime show out there right now, from Law & Order: SVU to Castle*), where it grates, but not in the same way. Most of the time, on the crime drama shows, the crime is not *about* the protagonist(s). They may occasionally over-identify with the victims of the crimes--maybe the young girl reminds Castle of Alexis, say--or they may have gotten into the profession for personal reasons that are reflected in the crimes (as with Olivia Benson's backstory on SVU). But the crimes are not usually positioned *as* a learning experience or a dilemma for the protagonist.
But LoM has done this in every episode so far. Should Sam be like Gene, or like Sam? (And I've already gone on at length about the fact that this very question is insulting to me: what is so good and glorious about Gene?) When Sam tries to solve crimes like a 20th-century boy (okay, 21st, but that's not how the song goes, is it?), people, usually women, get hurt. And then Sam angsts about it. It's always All About Sam--except when there are *men* involved in the crime, apparently, because then the men have their own goals and wants instead of being straight-up passive victims. The men can try to save their mill or provide for their families, and Sam provides the bittersweet gaze of history (yeah, sorry, that mill is totally going under, but it's going to make an awesome block of flats one day), but he's not working out his own issues over their stories in the same way that he does with the women. And that's an episode in which his police method is successful--he solves the crime that no one else could--and no one gets hurt because of his actions. (Someone gets hurt, but it's for being an idiot with a gun.)
This was particularly off-putting in episode four, where the dead woman exists only so that Sam and Gene can have a heart-to-heart about how poor widdle Gene feels so bad about taking bribes, boo hoo hoo--and then turn around and clean up Dodge. The camera looks up at them as they stride into the nightclub, rock theme music blaring; back at the station, it's nothing but applause as they bring in the crooked owner.
But--for me, I couldn't give a toss. Where was all this heroism when it was the cops' turn to actually do their flipping jobs and arrest this man the first time he committed a crime, instead of turning a blind eye and opening a hand for a bribe? I am not all that interested in Gene's "redemption" or the bad cop making good. It's his job to be a good cop. And I don't like my buddy stories with corpses at their heart, thanks.
*I have this weird like-apathy relationship with Castle, in that I sort of wish it were a show about all the same characters hanging out in a coffee shop. Or a show about Castle and his family, which is easily my favorite part. I could not care less about the crimes, most weeks. I am kind of just watching the show for when Castle geeks out about stuff, including his daughter.