Unified by Ashmores: a convention thing + the way Conviction (one ep. in) is an AU in my head
First thing: 
wildpear emailed this afternoon to tell me that Aaron Ashmore is going to be at Hal-Con next month! I was already kinda wanting to go because Maggie Stiefvater's a guest, but Ashmore being on the list too pushed me into MUST GO TO CONVENTION mode. Which...is awkward, since weekend passes are long since sold out. Plus Casual Job will be in full swing. But now I'm keeping an eye on the Facebook group and will see if I can hook myself and
wildpear with weekend passes if anyone's selling them (there's someone who seems to be coordinating), and if not, there are still day passes for both the Friday and the Sunday.
I tweeted about Ashmore being a guest after
wildpear mentioned it, and joked about bringing Jinksy!bear to the con for him to sign. (Bringing a picture of Jinksy has also been suggested. It's a better idea.) And I tagged
AaronRAshmore when I did, and mentioned bringing the cat, and he replied with "You could try." *g* So I sent him pictures of Jinksy!bear, and he admired "his" namesake.
Second thing: the Conviction premiere, in which Hayley Atwell plays a former First Daughter and brilliant lawyer who, after one Questionable Incident too many (in this case cocaine possession, but I'm not clear on whether there was any prior criminal behavior or just a lot of scandalous stuff), gets strong-armed into heading up a new division looking into convictions to see if they stand up or if the convicted person is actually innocent.
The only other person in the cast I'm familiar with is Shawn Ashmore, whose work I'm less familiar with than Aaron's. I know Aaron from Veronica Mars, Warehouse 13, and Killjoys, but this is my first time seeing Shawn outside of the X-Men movies. (Not counting the single episode of Fringe [season 3] where the Ashmores played twins, styled identically rather than having any differences played up. IIRC I've only seen that episode once, and wasn't paying much attention to which actor played which character, but once I get more familiar with Shawn from Conviction I should rewatch and see if I can tell them apart by acting style. I'm sure there are visual tells too, but usually they look so different from always being on different projects that I've never needed to do more than glance, especially when Aaron was on W13 and had his head shaved to play Steve.)
Anyway. As my Tumblr tag says, in my heart Hayley Atwell plays Becks Atherton (see this photo in particular, 'cause HELLO), and it turns out I can't judge the first Conviction episode much on its own merits, because it's Hayley Atwell playing a gorgeous, brilliant, rich American girl rebelling against her parents, so from basically the first moment I was watching it as a somewhat cracktastic Newsflesh AU where Becks didn't get away from her family and had no zombies to channel her rebellion into. (This obviously requires a LOT of handwaving; if it were an actual AU someone was writing it would also be deviating so far from Becks' character that there would be calls to file the serial numbers off. But Hayley Atwell.)
Setting all that aside as much as possible...this is not a great show. And for all the fun I may be about to get out of my AU!vision, I would infinitely rather have Agent Carter back again. But I think it looks like it has the potential to be a relatively decent procedural.
Originally posted at http://umadoshi.dreamwidth.org/731835.html. Comment here if you like, or comment there using OpenID. Comments at DW:
wildpear emailed this afternoon to tell me that Aaron Ashmore is going to be at Hal-Con next month! I was already kinda wanting to go because Maggie Stiefvater's a guest, but Ashmore being on the list too pushed me into MUST GO TO CONVENTION mode. Which...is awkward, since weekend passes are long since sold out. Plus Casual Job will be in full swing. But now I'm keeping an eye on the Facebook group and will see if I can hook myself and
wildpear with weekend passes if anyone's selling them (there's someone who seems to be coordinating), and if not, there are still day passes for both the Friday and the Sunday.
I tweeted about Ashmore being a guest after
wildpear mentioned it, and joked about bringing Jinksy!bear to the con for him to sign. (Bringing a picture of Jinksy has also been suggested. It's a better idea.) And I tagged
AaronRAshmore when I did, and mentioned bringing the cat, and he replied with "You could try." *g* So I sent him pictures of Jinksy!bear, and he admired "his" namesake.
Second thing: the Conviction premiere, in which Hayley Atwell plays a former First Daughter and brilliant lawyer who, after one Questionable Incident too many (in this case cocaine possession, but I'm not clear on whether there was any prior criminal behavior or just a lot of scandalous stuff), gets strong-armed into heading up a new division looking into convictions to see if they stand up or if the convicted person is actually innocent.
The only other person in the cast I'm familiar with is Shawn Ashmore, whose work I'm less familiar with than Aaron's. I know Aaron from Veronica Mars, Warehouse 13, and Killjoys, but this is my first time seeing Shawn outside of the X-Men movies. (Not counting the single episode of Fringe [season 3] where the Ashmores played twins, styled identically rather than having any differences played up. IIRC I've only seen that episode once, and wasn't paying much attention to which actor played which character, but once I get more familiar with Shawn from Conviction I should rewatch and see if I can tell them apart by acting style. I'm sure there are visual tells too, but usually they look so different from always being on different projects that I've never needed to do more than glance, especially when Aaron was on W13 and had his head shaved to play Steve.)
Anyway. As my Tumblr tag says, in my heart Hayley Atwell plays Becks Atherton (see this photo in particular, 'cause HELLO), and it turns out I can't judge the first Conviction episode much on its own merits, because it's Hayley Atwell playing a gorgeous, brilliant, rich American girl rebelling against her parents, so from basically the first moment I was watching it as a somewhat cracktastic Newsflesh AU where Becks didn't get away from her family and had no zombies to channel her rebellion into. (This obviously requires a LOT of handwaving; if it were an actual AU someone was writing it would also be deviating so far from Becks' character that there would be calls to file the serial numbers off. But Hayley Atwell.)
Setting all that aside as much as possible...this is not a great show. And for all the fun I may be about to get out of my AU!vision, I would infinitely rather have Agent Carter back again. But I think it looks like it has the potential to be a relatively decent procedural.
Originally posted at http://umadoshi.dreamwidth.org/731835.html. Comment here if you like, or comment there using OpenID. Comments at DW: