You wound me, TV
It's been a week since last week's appalling TV experience and I'm still reeling from the shock and anger of those shows that made me question whether I should still care about watching some of them. The moment when they killed Laurel Lance and Abigail Mills, I do take it personally and I wish whoever responsible the most painful stubbed toes or back pains imaginable.
I'm not going to rehash the entire controversy of Nicole Beharie's exit from Sleepy Hollow. God knows I've already exhausted myself hating on Sleepy Hollow's Twitter feed by tagging them every time I rant about it. With all due respect to the lovely and talented Tom Mison, I totally am not interested in watching Sleepy Hollow without Abigail Mills or Nicole Beharie.
Because that one push, the one thing that made me decide "okay I'm going to give this wacky sounding premise of a TV show" a try in the end was because she was there. I discovered Nicole from Shame and I knew she was, at that time, known as "Michael Fassbender's girlfriend". I wanted to know how she acted outside Shame and, wow, that first episode was a revelation. I like how 'Leftenant' Abbie Mills was small and beautiful but also tough and rational, and then became a personality as large as the man out of time standing right next to her. Meanwhile, I'd only discovered Mison on the show as I watched him play Crane, only discovering later that he shared a screen with Cumberbatch in Parade's End. So while I fangirl Mison, it's Beharie that made me pay attention and then stick around.
Also, the headless horseman was great. So the fact that Abbie got pushed to the sidelines in Season 2 and again in Season 3, as well as the horseman missing for the entire of season 3... well, that was already pretty painful. I toughed it out until the finale of the latest season but after this? *sigh* Best of luck to Tom Mison but, no, if there's no Abbie and no Nikki, I am off the bandwagon.
Which brings us to a slightly less depressing TV death: Laurel Lance, aka Black Canary.
TBH, I wasn't a great fan of Laurel when I first watched Arrow. I just felt that she was quite the damsel in distress back then, even though I sympathized with her character's journey. Oliver Queen is a bastard for having cheated on her, as well as for going back to her again and again even when she was trying to move on. But even so I didn't think she had much of a personality of her own... until she started drinking. And until her sister Sara Lance showed up.
As much as I disliked Laurel's overly made up face and her unrealistic costumes (I have no idea what the lawyers' dress code in America is but I doubted her cleavage-revealing dresses of season 2 was what real lawyers wore), seeing her beside Sara made me realize that the character has potential. The Lance family is, in my opinion, even more dysfunctional than the Queens and, when she turned alcoholic, I couldn't help but think, "Her family drove her to this. This is not entirely her fault. Other people probably would've been driven to murder. She was 'only' driven to harming her body with alcohol." And then she got help, dealt with her issues and made peace with her sister - who slept around with Oliver and, as it turned out, Nyssa - and came out as an ADA, stronger than before, and wearing more reasonable clothes!
For the entire show - all four seasons of it - I have been waiting for Laurel Lance to become the Black Canary. I was annoyed when I found out that Sara had taken the Canary title first but, thankfully, the writers didn't let me down. Not only did they finally make Laurel Black Canary, they wrote the entire she-became-the-Canary-from-grief-over-Sara thing, which was aces in my book. I don't care if she doesn't end up with Oliver - I'm usually happy when the females in this show break up with Oliver because he really shouldn't be dating until he figures out just what the hell it is he wants from life - as long as she keeps kicking ass as Black Canary.
Then they kill her.
Of course there's a chance they can still resurrect her (this is, after all, a comic book show and the character must have definitely experienced a comic book death - she's not even the first one to do so) although showrunners say it's not a fake death. Plus, Katie's still going to show up in other Arrowverse shows, as well as flashbacks but seriously? WHY KILL LAUREL LANCE? Just when she was hitting her stride, she's dead. That pisses me off.
Why can't they kill Malcolm Merlyn instead? I've got nothing against John Barrowman but I think Malcolm's outlived his interestingness in the show. Get another supervillain to show up again and again to play Team Arrow's frenemy! Hey, look, there's Damien Dahrk! (Or, I don't know, bring back Deathstroke or something.)
Sometimes I wonder if I invest too much time in watching TV shows. I never used to be like this. Three seasons of something and then I'm out. But now I'm agonizing over character deaths and the fact that Hollywood still loves to kill women. I read somewhere that they killed off female characters in The Americans and Empire too! Whatever the color of their skin, it is NOT OKAY to continue killing women in stories, writers. What is wrong with you, Hollywood?!
I want to believe that shows like Arrow can teach their movie counterparts how a comic book adaptation can be done right - Arrowverse certainly has done a great job with that - but how can I when, just as we're getting Wonder Woman on the big screen, we then lose Black Canary on the small screen? Surely they can both exist? Don't be sexists, writers, sheesh.
Now I will go and contemplate whether or not The Catch - the new Shondaland series starring Mireille Enos - is worth following religiously or just casually.
EDIT: ET TU, THE BLACKLIST?!
Unbelievable.
I'm not going to rehash the entire controversy of Nicole Beharie's exit from Sleepy Hollow. God knows I've already exhausted myself hating on Sleepy Hollow's Twitter feed by tagging them every time I rant about it. With all due respect to the lovely and talented Tom Mison, I totally am not interested in watching Sleepy Hollow without Abigail Mills or Nicole Beharie.
Because that one push, the one thing that made me decide "okay I'm going to give this wacky sounding premise of a TV show" a try in the end was because she was there. I discovered Nicole from Shame and I knew she was, at that time, known as "Michael Fassbender's girlfriend". I wanted to know how she acted outside Shame and, wow, that first episode was a revelation. I like how 'Leftenant' Abbie Mills was small and beautiful but also tough and rational, and then became a personality as large as the man out of time standing right next to her. Meanwhile, I'd only discovered Mison on the show as I watched him play Crane, only discovering later that he shared a screen with Cumberbatch in Parade's End. So while I fangirl Mison, it's Beharie that made me pay attention and then stick around.
Also, the headless horseman was great. So the fact that Abbie got pushed to the sidelines in Season 2 and again in Season 3, as well as the horseman missing for the entire of season 3... well, that was already pretty painful. I toughed it out until the finale of the latest season but after this? *sigh* Best of luck to Tom Mison but, no, if there's no Abbie and no Nikki, I am off the bandwagon.
Which brings us to a slightly less depressing TV death: Laurel Lance, aka Black Canary.
TBH, I wasn't a great fan of Laurel when I first watched Arrow. I just felt that she was quite the damsel in distress back then, even though I sympathized with her character's journey. Oliver Queen is a bastard for having cheated on her, as well as for going back to her again and again even when she was trying to move on. But even so I didn't think she had much of a personality of her own... until she started drinking. And until her sister Sara Lance showed up.
As much as I disliked Laurel's overly made up face and her unrealistic costumes (I have no idea what the lawyers' dress code in America is but I doubted her cleavage-revealing dresses of season 2 was what real lawyers wore), seeing her beside Sara made me realize that the character has potential. The Lance family is, in my opinion, even more dysfunctional than the Queens and, when she turned alcoholic, I couldn't help but think, "Her family drove her to this. This is not entirely her fault. Other people probably would've been driven to murder. She was 'only' driven to harming her body with alcohol." And then she got help, dealt with her issues and made peace with her sister - who slept around with Oliver and, as it turned out, Nyssa - and came out as an ADA, stronger than before, and wearing more reasonable clothes!
For the entire show - all four seasons of it - I have been waiting for Laurel Lance to become the Black Canary. I was annoyed when I found out that Sara had taken the Canary title first but, thankfully, the writers didn't let me down. Not only did they finally make Laurel Black Canary, they wrote the entire she-became-the-Canary-from-grief-over-Sara thing, which was aces in my book. I don't care if she doesn't end up with Oliver - I'm usually happy when the females in this show break up with Oliver because he really shouldn't be dating until he figures out just what the hell it is he wants from life - as long as she keeps kicking ass as Black Canary.
Then they kill her.
Of course there's a chance they can still resurrect her (this is, after all, a comic book show and the character must have definitely experienced a comic book death - she's not even the first one to do so) although showrunners say it's not a fake death. Plus, Katie's still going to show up in other Arrowverse shows, as well as flashbacks but seriously? WHY KILL LAUREL LANCE? Just when she was hitting her stride, she's dead. That pisses me off.
Why can't they kill Malcolm Merlyn instead? I've got nothing against John Barrowman but I think Malcolm's outlived his interestingness in the show. Get another supervillain to show up again and again to play Team Arrow's frenemy! Hey, look, there's Damien Dahrk! (Or, I don't know, bring back Deathstroke or something.)
Sometimes I wonder if I invest too much time in watching TV shows. I never used to be like this. Three seasons of something and then I'm out. But now I'm agonizing over character deaths and the fact that Hollywood still loves to kill women. I read somewhere that they killed off female characters in The Americans and Empire too! Whatever the color of their skin, it is NOT OKAY to continue killing women in stories, writers. What is wrong with you, Hollywood?!
I want to believe that shows like Arrow can teach their movie counterparts how a comic book adaptation can be done right - Arrowverse certainly has done a great job with that - but how can I when, just as we're getting Wonder Woman on the big screen, we then lose Black Canary on the small screen? Surely they can both exist? Don't be sexists, writers, sheesh.
Now I will go and contemplate whether or not The Catch - the new Shondaland series starring Mireille Enos - is worth following religiously or just casually.
EDIT: ET TU, THE BLACKLIST?!
Unbelievable.