we haven't talked about my feelings in days. DAYS.
So, the Leepost ended up with higher quality of comments than quantity, and I am a bit flattered to see that it's been linked in a couple of places. HI no_takebacks PEOPLE, AND BLESS YOUR INDEFATIGABLY SHIPPY LITTLE HEARTS.
I'm a little surprised at the amount of surprise over what, to me, was a quick throwaway line early in the post, that I think Lee is depressed. Not disappointed or angry or anything, nobody has been obnoxious. It's just, this is a consistent piece of my picture of the character, to the point where I didn't think that would be a contentious interpretation.
I didn't watch the show as it aired. WHATEVER, I'M THE NEW GIRL but this is my house so #kanyeshrug. I watched nearly all of it in a couple of months late last year, so I didn't have weeks or months or years between episodes or seasons to become attached to one idea or another of a storyline or character. In some ways, it probably hurt my viewing experience. I am guessing S4 made more sense to viewers who had years to forget S2, for example, which I recognize is not an unreasonable expectation for the medium but I'd hazard a guess that my WTF quotient was considerably higher than average.
Upside, I wasn't reading interviews or hearing anything from the writers, production team, or actors as I was forming my opinions. I'm generally of the opinion that authorial intent is interesting and not entirely irrelevant, but doesn't dictate my analysis of whatever text. Generally, the author is dead except insofar as said author (a) supports my argument, because solipsism is okay as long as it's my solipsism, or (b) is Jane Espenson, because she cracks me up. I let my f-list commune with the metaphorically dead author via seance and/or old podcast and then snatch up the hilarious baby crackfics that come out of the author's mouth. (Because seriously, what is that dude on and where can I get some, might be the real question here. 'Cause it's always either total brilliance or grade-A crazy, but either way, SOUNDS LIKE FUN.)
So I haven't the foggiest what was intended in the moments that point to this opinion, and I don't care. I don't know who or what JB was channeling when he flopped down with Shevon and did the Shrink Couch Sprawl, but I swear to God, I get Lee better in that moment than in all his champ-ass pistol-swinging in the first season. As ugly and exploitative and self-deceptive as it all was, and as much as the episode dropped the ball, I still feel for him there. Exodus was really the first episode where I liked and understood him. No, it wasn't pretty, but pretty stops being credible after a while, whether or not the emotional devastation is visible. I'm not wild about the moralistic tone I think there was around the weight gain, but the thought processes we saw from him were spot-on. And, well, that can happen during a depressive episode.
Lee mopes, and can't connect to people, not even the brother he loved more than anything, and sticks on his bad decisions, and is extremely sensitive to the bullshit from his awful father who appears to have been his more emotionally stable parent, and leans on bad relationships and yes sometimes alcohol, and has fluctuations in appetite, and tries to kill himself and isn't happy about not having succeeded, and falls into black holes of unhappy aimlessness, and lashes out at the people who do support him, and keeps searching for the external change in his life that will fix something within him and it helps sometimes even if it can't heal him entirely.
Occam's razor says, he is struggling with depression and sometimes does better with it than other times. Power to anyone who picks and chooses what they consider Their Story here, and if Captain Commander President Awesomepollo, White Horse Riding Motherfrakker-in-Residence, is your homeboy, I support that 100%, particularly as I'd argue that's not so much inconsistent with my view of the character as one dimension of him among several. But to me, this is the cipher that makes it all read clear as day.
I don't mean I think he is always in that dull black space from RS-Sacrifice, incapable of actually doing anything of merit. Depression can be debilitating, and it sometimes is in my read on Lee, but it's not that simple. Look at Churchill and his black dog, at Abraham Lincoln.
This isn't some bizarre unprecedented choice in television, if admittedly a difficult thing to do well. For all my issues with WW, the Zeeg was a beautifully-rounded character with depression, which was just part of him even if, or possibly because, it never ended up in a flashy storyline the way spoiler's alcoholism or spoiler's PTSD did. It's not even unheard-of in procedurals. House and Monk have other issues, and reasons to be miserable, but their respective shows make it pretty clear that it wasn't only their traumatic adult lives that made them the way they are. The ME oeuvre does a beautiful job with depression. If you have seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I can't recommend gabrielleabelle 's series on Season 6 and clinical depression strongly enough. (I can hear you saying I HATE THE LATER SEASONS. I can. Do yourself a favor, go bask in her brilliance.) And oh, Wesley. My Wesley.
Maybe you always come back wrong.
I'm just a little worried there's an element of defensiveness going on, like I'm trying to cut the character down to his worst few moments, or ignore or invalidate his growth, or some insertion of the idea that "mentally ill" = "less than," and I want to clarify that is not the case, at all. (Defensive about potential defensiveness about Lee freaking Adama, OH THE METANESS OF MY META.) On the contrary, I think it's more impressive if he's struggling in this way and still does what he does. I see his story with sympathy, and yes, deep empathy. There is neither sin nor shame in mental illness. It just sucks. And indeed, sometimes I think one of Lee's great tragedies is that he never figures that out.
(Note: Not that I mind disagreement or expect any ish, but if people make personal comments, be cool or Roslin will hand you over to the Cavils to be experimented on, probably after she burns your soul out with her eyes or something because she is motherfucking hardcore.)
I'm a little surprised at the amount of surprise over what, to me, was a quick throwaway line early in the post, that I think Lee is depressed. Not disappointed or angry or anything, nobody has been obnoxious. It's just, this is a consistent piece of my picture of the character, to the point where I didn't think that would be a contentious interpretation.
I didn't watch the show as it aired. WHATEVER, I'M THE NEW GIRL but this is my house so #kanyeshrug. I watched nearly all of it in a couple of months late last year, so I didn't have weeks or months or years between episodes or seasons to become attached to one idea or another of a storyline or character. In some ways, it probably hurt my viewing experience. I am guessing S4 made more sense to viewers who had years to forget S2, for example, which I recognize is not an unreasonable expectation for the medium but I'd hazard a guess that my WTF quotient was considerably higher than average.
Upside, I wasn't reading interviews or hearing anything from the writers, production team, or actors as I was forming my opinions. I'm generally of the opinion that authorial intent is interesting and not entirely irrelevant, but doesn't dictate my analysis of whatever text. Generally, the author is dead except insofar as said author (a) supports my argument, because solipsism is okay as long as it's my solipsism, or (b) is Jane Espenson, because she cracks me up. I let my f-list commune with the metaphorically dead author via seance and/or old podcast and then snatch up the hilarious baby crackfics that come out of the author's mouth. (Because seriously, what is that dude on and where can I get some, might be the real question here. 'Cause it's always either total brilliance or grade-A crazy, but either way, SOUNDS LIKE FUN.)
So I haven't the foggiest what was intended in the moments that point to this opinion, and I don't care. I don't know who or what JB was channeling when he flopped down with Shevon and did the Shrink Couch Sprawl, but I swear to God, I get Lee better in that moment than in all his champ-ass pistol-swinging in the first season. As ugly and exploitative and self-deceptive as it all was, and as much as the episode dropped the ball, I still feel for him there. Exodus was really the first episode where I liked and understood him. No, it wasn't pretty, but pretty stops being credible after a while, whether or not the emotional devastation is visible. I'm not wild about the moralistic tone I think there was around the weight gain, but the thought processes we saw from him were spot-on. And, well, that can happen during a depressive episode.
Lee mopes, and can't connect to people, not even the brother he loved more than anything, and sticks on his bad decisions, and is extremely sensitive to the bullshit from his awful father who appears to have been his more emotionally stable parent, and leans on bad relationships and yes sometimes alcohol, and has fluctuations in appetite, and tries to kill himself and isn't happy about not having succeeded, and falls into black holes of unhappy aimlessness, and lashes out at the people who do support him, and keeps searching for the external change in his life that will fix something within him and it helps sometimes even if it can't heal him entirely.
Occam's razor says, he is struggling with depression and sometimes does better with it than other times. Power to anyone who picks and chooses what they consider Their Story here, and if Captain Commander President Awesomepollo, White Horse Riding Motherfrakker-in-Residence, is your homeboy, I support that 100%, particularly as I'd argue that's not so much inconsistent with my view of the character as one dimension of him among several. But to me, this is the cipher that makes it all read clear as day.
I don't mean I think he is always in that dull black space from RS-Sacrifice, incapable of actually doing anything of merit. Depression can be debilitating, and it sometimes is in my read on Lee, but it's not that simple. Look at Churchill and his black dog, at Abraham Lincoln.
This isn't some bizarre unprecedented choice in television, if admittedly a difficult thing to do well. For all my issues with WW, the Zeeg was a beautifully-rounded character with depression, which was just part of him even if, or possibly because, it never ended up in a flashy storyline the way spoiler's alcoholism or spoiler's PTSD did. It's not even unheard-of in procedurals. House and Monk have other issues, and reasons to be miserable, but their respective shows make it pretty clear that it wasn't only their traumatic adult lives that made them the way they are. The ME oeuvre does a beautiful job with depression. If you have seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I can't recommend gabrielleabelle 's series on Season 6 and clinical depression strongly enough. (I can hear you saying I HATE THE LATER SEASONS. I can. Do yourself a favor, go bask in her brilliance.) And oh, Wesley. My Wesley.
Maybe you always come back wrong.
I'm just a little worried there's an element of defensiveness going on, like I'm trying to cut the character down to his worst few moments, or ignore or invalidate his growth, or some insertion of the idea that "mentally ill" = "less than," and I want to clarify that is not the case, at all. (Defensive about potential defensiveness about Lee freaking Adama, OH THE METANESS OF MY META.) On the contrary, I think it's more impressive if he's struggling in this way and still does what he does. I see his story with sympathy, and yes, deep empathy. There is neither sin nor shame in mental illness. It just sucks. And indeed, sometimes I think one of Lee's great tragedies is that he never figures that out.
(Note: Not that I mind disagreement or expect any ish, but if people make personal comments, be cool or Roslin will hand you over to the Cavils to be experimented on, probably after she burns your soul out with her eyes or something because she is motherfucking hardcore.)