Birdwings

I was gonna hide this post entirely. Then I decided I'll just hide it with a cut tag, since it's about my emotional state, as regards tv, and that way it can be skipped as needed. ( Read more... )

Alright, so this kind of sucked. Season five goes a long way to fixing the problems (so far anyway). There was a bit of good stuff in season four, but the bad weighed too heavy for me, mostly involving total lack of character moments. Also, the plotting of this installment is beyond swiss cheese. It's a moth-eaten v-neck sweater. It's the victim of a Prohibition Era drive by. It should be renamed Dire Wolf, because that's the state of the writing at all times. "Maybe the wine isn't wine." That's gonna be my go to phrase for all explanations which make less sense than the hole they're supposed to patch. It was shameful. ( Read more... )

This show. Holy cow, this show. Humor is subjective, and this is a teen supernatural drama, not a dramedy, sitcom or other humorous entity, so I'm aware much of my amusement is unintentionally provoked but I haven't laughed this much in years. I'm in fits of giggles just trying to get my notes in a semblance of order. Heads up: This is not one of my deeper, thoughtful reviews. ( Read more... )

So I watched 'Sunday.' It took me a while to figure out my thoughts on it and put them into words. Best summed up in the phrase "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory" because this was actually close to being great, except for all the rampant stupidity and something vaguely akin to sadism with Carson being so nice to everybody who refuse to go fishing with him. So, this made me angry but since I like to lead with the positives...

Various old show spoilers and some degree of profanity behind the cut. ( Read more... )

Since I've been watching this diligently in efforts to watch fewer shows at a time and finish them more quickly, and I've got a bunch of thoughts and am procrastinating on my current writing projects, SGA opinions, early season three.

First, season three has done a satisfying 180 in terms of giving the characters meaningful interactions that have moved beyond quippiness - it's still there, only it leads to more substance (either that or the characters are finally gelling in my brain). For instance, Ronon and McKay having an argument about what to do with their last minutes of life aboard a Wraith ship, or Sheppard awkwardly explaining to Teyla that the team is the only family he has, or Weir starting a board meeting by expressing relief that her presumed-dead teammates actually survived - in stark contrast to stuff like the volcano episode, which ended up using a third of its runtime to depict all the separated team members thinking each other dead with the following reunion scene being limited to a quick smile and a bunch of plot boilerplate. So this is dazzling improvement and I hope it continues.

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So, having seen Lost Highway, sitting tensely through it and afterward adding it to my group of mystical Lynch experiences with Twin Peaks and Mulholland Dr., I am fully satisfied. As usual for me, there's the cognitive dissonance of watching what is basically a horror film and finding it fascinating despite hating horror as a genre, because I love the concepts that go with it. However disagreeable it can be, there is a sense of beauty even in the midst of nightmare. I watched it as a tale of evil which acts on invitation, of demonic possession (literal or metaphorical) and the inescapable, of succumbing to paranoia and degradation while surrounded by the divine. It's a grim outlook, but valuable and cathartic to me.

Then I looked it up online and found endless interpretations of the film, which are actually all an identical theory, which is basically: It's 'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge' all over again. There is no supernatural menace. Nothing is in the house. There is no Mystery Man, time loop or doppelgangers. In fact, there are no actual events in most of the film. There is no story being told. It is all a dream, which the main character fantasizes while sitting on death row, before dying in the final scene.

This happens to be exactly the same as what Mulholland Dr. was commonly agreed to be about. No fantasy, no impossibilities (in a freaking David Lynch film? seriously?), just armchair psychiatry. This also makes the two films functionally identical in both meaning and plot, which means auteur Lynch is really not that creative at all, is he?

The thing is, while I don't think it's that interesting a theory because it removes the worldbuilding, the internal logic, any spiritual component or sense of mystery, I don't necessarily think it's "wrong." There's no right or wrong when it comes to interpretation. What I find bothersome is how hive minded it is, and how the hive mind instantly jumps on a highbrow supernatural art film and removes all traces of the supernatural from it. And, well, Lynch himself refuses to explain his creations, because each individual brings themself to the picture, so I find it kind of ridiculous to take a highly layered film and then tout a single interpretation across the internet. Way to miss the whole point.

TV critics are a different breed. I don't think I've ever run across a Twin Peaks interpretation that dismisses all the paranormal occurrences as mere imagination. I mean, what's to stop them? Why not claim the entire town is actually quite boring, and Dale Cooper (an equally boring salesman) is so overcome with ennui that he fantasizes about being an FBI agent who befriends the local sheriff and uncovers dark plots - when in reality Laura Palmer drowned in a fishing accident and there was nothing criminal going on at all. His fantasy gets wilder as it breaks down, and finally he can't handle being ignored by everybody and starts committing crimes as his alter ego Wyndom Earle, before offing himself at the end...

But they don't argue for this (at least not that I've seen). They accept the fantasy and cheerfully work with it, because it enhances and increases the number of meanings and interpretations you can have of the text. Take that away, and any fantastic narrative will become 'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.' Or the Buffy episode 'Normal Again.'

I like 'Normal Again,' but I've seen a lot of angry comments about it from people saying they don't want to be told nothing in the show is real - as if such an interpretation, once made, is inescapably true, the critical checkmate. Once brought up, it acts to ruin the fantasy forever. What else could such glorious impossibility be, except the main character's psychosis?

Answer: It could be as many things as there are pairs of eyes to watch it and human souls to interpret it.

It was about a year ago that I made this list of obscure ships, and it's time for a second go round, as there are shows I've watched since, or pairings I had not considered before, and a couple which almost made the prior list and were tossed to keep it relatively short. My criteria remain exactly the same, running the AO3 numbers and drawing purely from speculative shows. This time I will be including my sole ardent crossover ship. The list is arranged from least to most obscure. Again, this is mostly me having fun and showering these couples with deserved affection while I wait for my current writer's block to ease. It seems that's an October thing with me.

( Cut for images, old show spoilers and occasionally shamefaced gushiness. )

For the first time in years, I have signed up for a streaming service. I will not be on it any longer than strictly necessary, as "streaming" is interchangeable with "renting" and I like to own hard copies of quality shows - Netflix burned through all my streaming goodwill that way, and Hulu is already doing the same thing because Roswell is expiring in thirteen days. I've only been signed up for a week! This is especially aggravating because Hulu is fairly short on my kind of television and I have a very short watch list, so for them to already be culling it is a bad sign.

I watched a handful of pilot episodes, so I can zero in on the most interesting material to me, and do a love 'em and lose 'em routine. There's still a bunch I haven't tried yet. Arranged in declining order of investment.

Justified - Came highly recommended and even a single episode proved why. Sharp script, excellent acting, and I was quickly invested in several characters. Also overjoyed to see Nick Searcy in a main role, because he was terrific on American Gothic. We've watched four episodes now and it is increasingly entertaining and a lot funnier than I expected. It's on my Christmas list.

Roswell - A teenybopper Twin Peaks (it's even got Michael Horse in the sheriff's station, though sadly in a very minor role). An X-Files canvas thickly sugarcoated with high school themes. Gotta love the earnest heart-on-sleeve 90s-ness of it all, and the excellent choice of lanky, sinister Jason Behr (Ford the treacherous wannabe vampire on Buffy) as teen heartthrob Max. He brings a little needed grit to the role. Honestly, the pilot was silly and sweet and very much a 90s teen drama with supernatural sprinkles and I don't see any reason to consider this genre to be inherently shameful if the writing's there. One episode didn't tell me much, but it being on the chopping block won it the sweepstakes, so... thanks, Hulu? Second episode a huge improvement, emphasizing the secondary characters and cutting back on the googly eyes in favor of actual plot (plus Julie Benz!), and the third continues the upward trajectory. I am thoroughly charmed.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - I've always wanted to see this show, so this was a major factor in signing up. Lena Headey does a fine job, and I love that the scarred parent-child relationship is front and center with any romantic entanglements entirely an afterthought. Summer Glau sounded perfect on paper but I didn't find her quite robotic enough to be convinced. Compelling plot, a little more action-oriented than I require (some bottomless magazines and a lot of stuff getting demolished) but with time travel and plentiful paranoia and a promising group of characters getting involved in the looming apocalypse, so I am on board. Biggest downside was some really on-the-nose dialogue, but it's a pilot and has to tie back to two Hollywood blockbusters, so I'm ready to forgive.

Stargate: Atlantis - Wildly uneven, but I may have to swear allegiance to Canadian television at this rate. About the time I started saying "Is that Paul? Oh my God, it is Paul!" was the moment I realized I could easily binge this show (I finally looked him up - actor Christopher Heyerdahl, who so far has been totally wasted in a generic role, but at least he ain't dead yet). The first ten minutes were fully incomprehensible, possibly one of the worst spinoffs I've ever seen for failing to establish any lore for newcomers, but the characters were colorful archetypes easy to tell apart, so I stuck with it and once they hit Atlantis, the plot went into high gear, plus all that wonderfully unserious "here's an alien galaxy with conveniently located humans speaking English in British Columbian forests because we've got no budget, please go with it" that I find simply adorable. They clearly had budget, though - they just blew it all on some (admittedly damn good-looking) shots of Atlantis rising from the ocean and space dogfighting. The emphasis is definitely on action rather than character-driven ethical dilemmas, which is a pity as the scenario is pitch perfect to deliver both kinds of cake. The villains (chalk skinned Voice of the Legion alien vampires who wandered in from a heavy metal music video) are kind of rubbish. But with a bowl of popcorn...

White Collar - Bubblegum. An advertisement for it was on my Burn Notice discs, and it looked fun, and this is an accurate descriptor, but it also makes Burn Notice look gritty and heavy-hitting. Neal was exceptionally cute, the stolid FBI guy had a promising dynamic with him, and the script was full of zingers, but once Neal won an effortless ticket to a Rat Packer's mansion, my eyes rolled and never really recovered. Also, Neal's girlfriend leaving him a wine bottle just wasn't a strong enough hit to feed my angst addiction. Depending on how long I keep Hulu, I might give it a little more time to make a solid impression, but it's low priority.

Back when I saw Hard Core Logo, I succumbed to a fit of profanity-laced whimsy and wrote the start of a deranged crossover. Being terrible with numbers and scatterbrained, 1995 became 1996 in my head, and I sent the band to Sunnydale. Since then I have discovered my mistake, and so must declare this fic idea officially dead because there is no bridging the gap year between film and show. Probably for the best.

The part I wrote does not contradict the timeline, and even if it did, I have to post these 1,070 words for my own closure, so here they now live. Being only a fragment, I don't feel this belongs on AO3.

Contains loads of profanity and the high crime of being nuts. ( Read more... )

We've just finished watching Better Call Saul, which I was never invested in to the extent of needing to write about the experience. It was, of course, of inarguable quality once we got past the first season or so, but I don't think I've struggled so much with a show in a long time, partly for personal reasons (the entire Chuck storyline was hellish). I was hoping the ending would turn it around for me the way it happened with Breaking Bad, but it didn't. The finale, though low-key and thematically fitting, really didn't do anything to lessen the pain and discomfort of six seasons of toxic relationships, bad life choices, petty cruelty and cringe-inducing cons.

Anyway, since this one didn't pull a rabbit out of a hat and Breaking Bad oddly enough did - transforming my experience of the entire show which came before - I got to thinking which other shows actually pulled such eleventh hour victories and went ahead and made a spoilery list of the endings which have most impressed me for one reason or another.

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