tv!
Okay, I'm going to be at WisCon for the next five days (!!!) which means if I don't make this television post now, it's never going to get made. And so! TV I have watched & have feelings about!
Community
I didn't actually tap out of this season, and I'm glad I didn't! I often find the middle stretch of a season of Community sort of meh, and I don't know whether s4 just suffered from being too short, or if Harmon really was that crucial, but either way: meh middle, really did love the last run of episodes. They didn't find enough new things to say, I think, except when they did: the bodyswap episode, and Troy and Britta's breakup, was particularly great, as was Jeff working through his issues in the finale via the darkest timeline. Like the s3 finale, this one could've ended the show really nicely, but we get another season I hear?? It really is going to be six seasons and a movie, and I think I may be okay with that.
Doctor Who
wsdlkfsdsdf what was that, and also where do I start? Perhaps I should start with the things I liked, which was in fact a lot of it! Obviously I loved Neil Gaiman's episode, because he does id-writing really well, and gives everyone something to do, and wrote Clara in a way I really liked, and gfdjkfsdjfd help I really really loved Matt Smith's performance in that one. I also continue loving Jenny and Vastra and Strax; and, Rings of Ankhaten and Cold War aside, I think most of the episodes were fairly solid, although Nightmare in Silver aside I don't think they're going to stand up to many rewatches. (Well, no, I actually really liked Hide, too.)
Re: the finale in specific, I have all these River feelings! They are mostly "thank god you reframed the River-is-saved-in-the-Library narrative from 'he found a way to save her after all! happy ending!!' to 'he doesn't like endings, that was a pretty fucked-up thing to do'." And also wowww do I ship Doctor/River pretty hard, because [a] it continues to be pretty fucked-up, as previously mentioned, and actually acknowledged to be, and [b] uh gosh I could pretty much watch Matt Smith and Alex Kingston kiss all day, that's cool, right? So that was great! I also guessed what was up with Clara -- that she was going to somehow scatter into a lot of different versions of herself throughout time and space -- and I don't think that was badly executed, not least because Clara specifically chooses to do it, rather than having it done to her. (Seriously, I don't want to get into any RTD vs Moffat discussion here because my stance is basically "oh my god they both do some things really well and some things really badly!!" but one of the things Moffat genuinely does well is not give his companions super terrifying noncon endings. YEP NEVER GONNA STOP BEING ANGRY ABOUT DONNA.) Plus, hilarious greenscreen aside, how much did I love the way they inserted Clara into archive footage? Seven! Three! Five! ONE!!!
All of that said -- think about the arc plot for two seconds and the whole thing is a hot mess, comes down like a stack of cards, other mixed metaphors &c. Like. WE STILL DON'T KNOW WHY THE TARDIS EXPLODED. It ... exploded because Silence Will Fall? Possibly? And silence will fall when the question is asked, and the question is Doctor who, and the question will be asked at Trenzalor, except ... we follow all of these threads, and here we are at the Doctor's death, his for-real death when his tangled lives are just a scar in the fabric of spacetime in the tomb of an old dead TARDIS, and -- Clara fixed things, I guess? Unless the battle of Trenzalor is when the TARDIS explodes? Except that I don't know what any of this is supposed to be telegraphing? And I wish that the show would, like, SOLVE A SINGLE QUESTION BEFORE POSING TEN NEW ONES. It just frustrates me, because Moffat clearly adores the mystery without actually caring that much about the reveal, and I've had to actively stay way from fan speculation this half-season because otherwise I'd want to punch the screen because fan theories are so much better and more coherent. (I mean, that's been true since I started reading the spec in third season and people had much better solutions to the Master's evil world takeover than the Year That Never Was. Sigh.) But -- yeah. Could've done better.
And I'm ... maybe excited about the Fiftieth? Except that whyyyy do we have an extra evil Doctor played by John Hurt, I guess I get what you're getting at except dammit I like it when Eight becomes really broken and awful and then just turns into Nine without a tour into John Hurt land, JUST GIMME THE VALEYARD OR SOMETHING.
Elementary
!!!!!!!!!!!!
I don't know how coherent I can be about this show? I do know that, prior to the finale, someone on my reading list (and I forget who you are, sorry!) said, basically, that they don't know when they'd last trusted a show as much as they do Elementary. And I thought, yes, I feel that way too, but ... don't think that, shows always destroy you at some point. So we're going through the finale, and Irene's alive, and all the flashbacks with her and Sherlock are great, but she's super broken and Sherlock's having some manpain about it and I don't know where they're going with this and then SUDDENLY A CHOIR OF ANGELS DESCENDED, SINGING, BEHOLD YOUR MORIARTY, AND ALL MY DREAMS CAME TRUE.
No, but seriously, Polaris and I actually paused the episode for five minutes at the reveal to scream incoherently.
I know not everyone was thrilled with the Irene-is-Moriarty reveal! For really valid reasons! Like, for instance, when they take down Moriarty it means we now have yet another adaptation in which Irene fails to beat Holmes because of her ~love for him; also, they made Holmes/Moriarty canon via the vehicle of heterosexuality. These are very good points! They are still in my head because they are good criticism! But -- you guys, I can't even, I'm so so happy, because on the flip side we finally have an adaptation in which Irene did get away, she fucking faked her death to trick Holmes, she found out everything about him and was charmed but then did what she needed to do to get away to live the life she wanted, that is the story I want. And we finally have an adaptation where Holmes/Moriarty is canon, and despite the fact that it's also an adaptation where both Moriarty and Watson are women, we sidestep any awful jealousy plot entirely, instead we have a plot where Moriarty can tell Watson is a genuine threat of some kind, and then Joan Watson, professional BAMF, figures out Moriarty's flaw and they take her down! (Also, ftr, I read that flaw was being Moriarty's need to prove she won, and to gloat about it, in front of the only person clever enough to matter, rather than her downfall being ~love for Sherlock~.)
It was like Christmas and my birthday and a basket of kittens all at once! It was an amazing lady villain in exactly the same vein as all the dude villains I keep having feelings about, and also a deconstruction of them! It was a deconstruction of/conversation with Holmes canon and recent adaptations in surprising and unexpected ways, and probably at some later point I'll want to articulate that way more fully, but for the moment I'm just REALLY HAPPY ABOUT IT.
And then Sherlock named a bee after Joan and everything was perfect forever the end.
In addition to these, Polaris and I have also been watching Person of Interest, Polaris because a friend highly recommended it, me because now that astolat has moved on from Thor/Loki porn to Finch/Reese porn my life has been a barren wasteland and I wanted to be able to read her porn again. (I do things for good serious intellectual reasons.) We love it a whole lot?? We're only at the beginning of season two, and the beginning of season two hit me in the face with MACHINE FEELS, which will now live with my Fiiinch feels, and my John-Reese's-stupid-face feels, and my Caaaarter feels, and my ongoing dedication to Amy Acker and Enrico Colantoni. So uh that's been great? And I'd totally write the dystopia-with-robots AU, or the Batman AU, except I don't even need to.
All of this actually fails to be a rundown about what I'll be yelling about at WisCon, because what I'll be yelling about at WisCon is Avengers, as always. I don't think I need to do a Care & Feeding post, if only because I haven't done one in years past but have managed just fine, but: Amiel and I will be arriving tomorrow noon! If any of y'all are already in the area, hit us up and we'd be happy to do pre-con hangouts. :DDD
This entry was originally posted at http://aria.dreamwidth.org/204638.html. If you'd prefer, please comment there using OpenID.
comments.
Community
I didn't actually tap out of this season, and I'm glad I didn't! I often find the middle stretch of a season of Community sort of meh, and I don't know whether s4 just suffered from being too short, or if Harmon really was that crucial, but either way: meh middle, really did love the last run of episodes. They didn't find enough new things to say, I think, except when they did: the bodyswap episode, and Troy and Britta's breakup, was particularly great, as was Jeff working through his issues in the finale via the darkest timeline. Like the s3 finale, this one could've ended the show really nicely, but we get another season I hear?? It really is going to be six seasons and a movie, and I think I may be okay with that.
Doctor Who
wsdlkfsdsdf what was that, and also where do I start? Perhaps I should start with the things I liked, which was in fact a lot of it! Obviously I loved Neil Gaiman's episode, because he does id-writing really well, and gives everyone something to do, and wrote Clara in a way I really liked, and gfdjkfsdjfd help I really really loved Matt Smith's performance in that one. I also continue loving Jenny and Vastra and Strax; and, Rings of Ankhaten and Cold War aside, I think most of the episodes were fairly solid, although Nightmare in Silver aside I don't think they're going to stand up to many rewatches. (Well, no, I actually really liked Hide, too.)
Re: the finale in specific, I have all these River feelings! They are mostly "thank god you reframed the River-is-saved-in-the-Library narrative from 'he found a way to save her after all! happy ending!!' to 'he doesn't like endings, that was a pretty fucked-up thing to do'." And also wowww do I ship Doctor/River pretty hard, because [a] it continues to be pretty fucked-up, as previously mentioned, and actually acknowledged to be, and [b] uh gosh I could pretty much watch Matt Smith and Alex Kingston kiss all day, that's cool, right? So that was great! I also guessed what was up with Clara -- that she was going to somehow scatter into a lot of different versions of herself throughout time and space -- and I don't think that was badly executed, not least because Clara specifically chooses to do it, rather than having it done to her. (Seriously, I don't want to get into any RTD vs Moffat discussion here because my stance is basically "oh my god they both do some things really well and some things really badly!!" but one of the things Moffat genuinely does well is not give his companions super terrifying noncon endings. YEP NEVER GONNA STOP BEING ANGRY ABOUT DONNA.) Plus, hilarious greenscreen aside, how much did I love the way they inserted Clara into archive footage? Seven! Three! Five! ONE!!!
All of that said -- think about the arc plot for two seconds and the whole thing is a hot mess, comes down like a stack of cards, other mixed metaphors &c. Like. WE STILL DON'T KNOW WHY THE TARDIS EXPLODED. It ... exploded because Silence Will Fall? Possibly? And silence will fall when the question is asked, and the question is Doctor who, and the question will be asked at Trenzalor, except ... we follow all of these threads, and here we are at the Doctor's death, his for-real death when his tangled lives are just a scar in the fabric of spacetime in the tomb of an old dead TARDIS, and -- Clara fixed things, I guess? Unless the battle of Trenzalor is when the TARDIS explodes? Except that I don't know what any of this is supposed to be telegraphing? And I wish that the show would, like, SOLVE A SINGLE QUESTION BEFORE POSING TEN NEW ONES. It just frustrates me, because Moffat clearly adores the mystery without actually caring that much about the reveal, and I've had to actively stay way from fan speculation this half-season because otherwise I'd want to punch the screen because fan theories are so much better and more coherent. (I mean, that's been true since I started reading the spec in third season and people had much better solutions to the Master's evil world takeover than the Year That Never Was. Sigh.) But -- yeah. Could've done better.
And I'm ... maybe excited about the Fiftieth? Except that whyyyy do we have an extra evil Doctor played by John Hurt, I guess I get what you're getting at except dammit I like it when Eight becomes really broken and awful and then just turns into Nine without a tour into John Hurt land, JUST GIMME THE VALEYARD OR SOMETHING.
Elementary
!!!!!!!!!!!!
I don't know how coherent I can be about this show? I do know that, prior to the finale, someone on my reading list (and I forget who you are, sorry!) said, basically, that they don't know when they'd last trusted a show as much as they do Elementary. And I thought, yes, I feel that way too, but ... don't think that, shows always destroy you at some point. So we're going through the finale, and Irene's alive, and all the flashbacks with her and Sherlock are great, but she's super broken and Sherlock's having some manpain about it and I don't know where they're going with this and then SUDDENLY A CHOIR OF ANGELS DESCENDED, SINGING, BEHOLD YOUR MORIARTY, AND ALL MY DREAMS CAME TRUE.
No, but seriously, Polaris and I actually paused the episode for five minutes at the reveal to scream incoherently.
I know not everyone was thrilled with the Irene-is-Moriarty reveal! For really valid reasons! Like, for instance, when they take down Moriarty it means we now have yet another adaptation in which Irene fails to beat Holmes because of her ~love for him; also, they made Holmes/Moriarty canon via the vehicle of heterosexuality. These are very good points! They are still in my head because they are good criticism! But -- you guys, I can't even, I'm so so happy, because on the flip side we finally have an adaptation in which Irene did get away, she fucking faked her death to trick Holmes, she found out everything about him and was charmed but then did what she needed to do to get away to live the life she wanted, that is the story I want. And we finally have an adaptation where Holmes/Moriarty is canon, and despite the fact that it's also an adaptation where both Moriarty and Watson are women, we sidestep any awful jealousy plot entirely, instead we have a plot where Moriarty can tell Watson is a genuine threat of some kind, and then Joan Watson, professional BAMF, figures out Moriarty's flaw and they take her down! (Also, ftr, I read that flaw was being Moriarty's need to prove she won, and to gloat about it, in front of the only person clever enough to matter, rather than her downfall being ~love for Sherlock~.)
It was like Christmas and my birthday and a basket of kittens all at once! It was an amazing lady villain in exactly the same vein as all the dude villains I keep having feelings about, and also a deconstruction of them! It was a deconstruction of/conversation with Holmes canon and recent adaptations in surprising and unexpected ways, and probably at some later point I'll want to articulate that way more fully, but for the moment I'm just REALLY HAPPY ABOUT IT.
And then Sherlock named a bee after Joan and everything was perfect forever the end.
In addition to these, Polaris and I have also been watching Person of Interest, Polaris because a friend highly recommended it, me because now that astolat has moved on from Thor/Loki porn to Finch/Reese porn my life has been a barren wasteland and I wanted to be able to read her porn again. (I do things for good serious intellectual reasons.) We love it a whole lot?? We're only at the beginning of season two, and the beginning of season two hit me in the face with MACHINE FEELS, which will now live with my Fiiinch feels, and my John-Reese's-stupid-face feels, and my Caaaarter feels, and my ongoing dedication to Amy Acker and Enrico Colantoni. So uh that's been great? And I'd totally write the dystopia-with-robots AU, or the Batman AU, except I don't even need to.
All of this actually fails to be a rundown about what I'll be yelling about at WisCon, because what I'll be yelling about at WisCon is Avengers, as always. I don't think I need to do a Care & Feeding post, if only because I haven't done one in years past but have managed just fine, but: Amiel and I will be arriving tomorrow noon! If any of y'all are already in the area, hit us up and we'd be happy to do pre-con hangouts. :DDD
This entry was originally posted at http://aria.dreamwidth.org/204638.html. If you'd prefer, please comment there using OpenID.
comments.