This is pretty much my feelings on both of them. Wanting to know more about these two women since they were being put with characters we already knew and accepted. The little hints about background are fine and dandy, but at some point, if we're to care about them, we should know more about their background, more about what makes them click with the other characters, like we're supposed to believe.
I think you hit the nail on the head. It's possible with Catherine they relied too much on the back story they had in their head for her or the things they knew they planned (or maybe even wrote and possibly shot) that never made it onto the screen. But their brains do not come with what we see on screen, so we don't have the same emotional attachment.
In one episode they managed to give us the start of an emotional attachment to four characters, and we've been experiencing their lives ever since. It's hard to bring anyone else into that, harder still when you don't give them anywhere near the hook to attach us to them.
They've done a much better job with Grover, IMO, so maybe they've learned?
Yes, it's my impression that they've done better with Grover, too. I feel that I know why he's there, I know what his problem is, and I know what makes him tick.
Maybe if they brought in a female character who wasn't supposed to be a love interest for anyone (because I don't care what they claim about Lori, romantic friction was where they were originally intending on going, and puppy-dog-eyed mooning was where they ended up) then they would do a better job?
They probably would. Part of why Kono works is because she was brought on as one of the team. Not to be someone's girlfriend.
And I'm fine with love interests. Gabby was great, but that was her purpose--girlfriend. She was a secondary character that we saw occasionally to give Danny a girlfriend. Nothing wrong with that.
Bringing on a regular who is both on the team and a love interest for someone on the team, though? Bad move, IMO. This show's love stories are always secondary to the real stories. Because it's not a romcom.
I still think that they just didn't know what to do with Lori once they got her because they realized LG was horribly cast for that role and dropped pretty much everything and just let her moon so there would be a reason to write her out, but that's my opinion.
I did wonder if Grover's back story was something they crafted out of what they originally intended for Lori, though. Suddenly left his job and family to move all the way to Hawaii under mysterious circumstances...sound familiar?
Yes to everything you said. The writers wasted every opportunity to show us more about Catherine. We have no idea who she is and what her motivations were for anything. Her relationship with Steve seemed to go from casual to Serious Business in the blink of an eye, without any explanation. It's really quite frustrating. I liked the character going into this season, but there was really no reason to get emotionally invested in her. They just used her to fill in for Kono. Yet Grover comes in and gets this rich background and character development, something the writers appear to be unable to do with women.
I agree with all of this. I found it impossible to like Lori once they got beyond her first episode because they made a big hype about her being a profiler with years of experience but she didn't do any profiling, they did not explain why Denning brought her in specifically when he could have brought in someone from HPD who had no ties to any of the team. They basically set her up to be a great team member and then just decided they couldn't put any effort into explaining her to the viewers, or even show her having a likeable relationship with the team. She didn't do anything with them, she berated Danny when he tried to playfully tease her as he did other cast, she mooned over Steve like a tween over Bieber and just failed to really do anything with Kono or Chin
( ... )
Comments 7
Reply
Reply
In one episode they managed to give us the start of an emotional attachment to four characters, and we've been experiencing their lives ever since. It's hard to bring anyone else into that, harder still when you don't give them anywhere near the hook to attach us to them.
They've done a much better job with Grover, IMO, so maybe they've learned?
Reply
Maybe if they brought in a female character who wasn't supposed to be a love interest for anyone (because I don't care what they claim about Lori, romantic friction was where they were originally intending on going, and puppy-dog-eyed mooning was where they ended up) then they would do a better job?
Reply
And I'm fine with love interests. Gabby was great, but that was her purpose--girlfriend. She was a secondary character that we saw occasionally to give Danny a girlfriend. Nothing wrong with that.
Bringing on a regular who is both on the team and a love interest for someone on the team, though? Bad move, IMO. This show's love stories are always secondary to the real stories. Because it's not a romcom.
I still think that they just didn't know what to do with Lori once they got her because they realized LG was horribly cast for that role and dropped pretty much everything and just let her moon so there would be a reason to write her out, but that's my opinion.
I did wonder if Grover's back story was something they crafted out of what they originally intended for Lori, though. Suddenly left his job and family to move all the way to Hawaii under mysterious circumstances...sound familiar?
Reply
Reply
Reply
Leave a comment