Rewatch: 1x01 - Will You Tolerate This?

[rochvelleth]

I'm participating in the rewatch going on in roh_fics - see here for this week's.

Here are my thoughts on 1x01...

Comments

[roh_wyn]

The first time I watched 1x01, it didn't make much of an impression. I'm a history buff, and I was really jonesing for good period drama...and what I got was...well, NOT. Your first review reflects many of my own thoughts on the show at first watch.

A lot of the inconsistencies, lack of subtlety and problems with characterization that you point reinforce a pet theory I have. My sense is the first two episodes were written as a sort of pilot for the show, and all the characters are essentially cardboard cutouts of stock characters from the Robin Hood legend and other revisions of the legend. The dialogue is horrible, and no effort is made to give any of the characters any depth beyond what you see on screen.

But I think as the series progresses, the show sort of finds its legs. For example, it decides that Guy of Gisborne is a lot more interesting when he isn't just a hulking baddie, and that the Guy-Robin conflict is more multi-faceted if it's not just about the girl, but also about politics. (It's really weird to me how Guy and Robin both start off thinking the war in the Holy Land is a wasted exercise, but a few episodes in, and suddenly, Robin is more loyal to Richard I than anyone in England!)

I think Marian looking different also plays into the fact this was just a pilot. They obviously changed and/or updated their idea for her character after the first two episodes.

[rochvelleth]

I'm a history buff, and I was really jonesing for good period drama...and what I got was...well, NOT. Your first review reflects many of my own thoughts on the show at first watch.

I'm glad to hear I wasn't the only one who wasn't inclined to give it a good review right at the start! I think, more than decent period drama, I was hoping for something that got in line with moral commentary American and Americanesque TV shows that I was such a fan of back then (Buffy, Xena, Roar). I should really have taken a step back and appreciated it for what it was, I guess.

My sense is the first two episodes were written as a sort of pilot for the show, and all the characters are essentially cardboard cutouts of stock characters from the Robin Hood legend and other revisions of the legend.

You know, I find that very convincing. There's something about episode 1 in particular (I hadn't thought of adding ep 2, but I do see what you mean) that comes across as an exercise in impressing people and as such has amazingly little depth - depth being one of the things I really crave in TV shows, because I like to lose myself in them.

I wonder whether they actually had to produce the first couple of episodes quite early on and show them to someone in order to secure the series, or something like that... I haven't heard that they were filmed earlier (and I know most of the filming was massively out of sequence - I've been listening to the audio commentaries finally, yay!), but it's so different.

I'm looking forward to next week's reviewing. I dug out my old review for 1x02, and it starts off with me deciding that maaaybe RH isn't so bad after all. The speed with which I descended (ascended, really) into a slash-writing frenzy based on the show is really rather interesting, looking back...