![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyFirst, this is a good summary of why the show sucks so far. (Teal deer: There are no superheroics and all the characters are really bland.)
Second, my sense is that the politics are at least in part geared towards me? Ish? Whedon's politics are conflicted at best; on the one hand, Buffy and Firefly were, despite their flaws, quite feminist and progressive shows, on the other hand, Dollhouse. But moreover, he has this strong libertarian streak but he's now writing a show about a secretive government organization that occasionally kidnaps people and presumably does worse off-stage. This could be really interesting, and at the moment it's enough to keep me watching to see what develops, but it is, as the kids say, Highly Problematic.
I *should* have liked the last episode. It had a libertarian villain who was essentially Evil!Not Hot!Tony Stark spouting Ayn Rand, and a decent twist ending.
But all characters save Coulson and possibly May are, yes, incredibly bland. I mean, Coulson is kind of bland too, but that's the point of him. Everyman works for exactly one character, not five. Everyman should definitely not be the quirkiest character in an ensemble show, WTF? Even the tragic backstories are cliché. Can we not have better trauma?
Also, after three episodes which had, in sequence 1) an out-of-control dangerous black man, 2) evil Latin Americans, and 3) POC henchmen and arm candy, I'm starting to think that the show has some skeevy race issues. See further Firefly's lack of Asians, Buffy's lack of Latinos, and Gunn needing a brain upgrade on Angel.
Also, Skye is a terrible, terrible character. She's Gwen from Torchwood only not very good.* She seems to exist only to say stupid things (she was pro-Shining Path/anti-mining activists/which are the same thing amirite? in the second episode because they were sticking it to the Man, only to change her mind when someone she know got hurt, and then in this latest one she had to provide the pro-billionaire philanthropist perspective which, what?). I do not believe that a "hacktivist" would not know a single thing about infiltration or lockpicking. This is not something that requires extensive research. It requires ONE (1) trip to any hackerspace anywhere or conversely, hanging out on BoingBoing for about 30 seconds if you're utterly lazy. Hackers do not see a locked door and go, "umm it's locked what do I do now?"
I am also sad because Rising Tide is a pretty good sekrit hacker organization name, and it is being wasted on a bad show.
Incidentally, here is how to fix the show:
1. Lose everyone but Coulson and possibly May and Fitz (because he has a nice accent and the thing with the monkey was reasonably funny).
2. Hire uglier actors with more personality.
3. Make the show like Trigun. (Which, if you haven't seen it, is about a guy with insanely destructive superpowers who gets followed around by two insurance adjusters who want to account for all of the damage he leaves in his wake when he's trying to save the world. It's also a Christ allegory but it's the bit with the insurance adjusters that I liked best.) Essentially, have it be about regular people trying to do good in the presence of gods and monsters. Regular as in non-powered, not regular as in boring. Blowing up shit is cool on the big screen; now let's see a story about the people who have to mop up after the destruction.
4. Get the conflict between the institution and the individual more blatant and throw some decent writing at it, not just a frank exchange of clichés.
* See what I did there?
I am mostly watching because new Joss show and I'm willing to give it half a season in the hopes that it gets good, and also because there's a temporary TV void in my life while everything I like is either ended or on hiatus. And also because I enjoy mocking it, but it'd be nice to have something good to watch.
Second, my sense is that the politics are at least in part geared towards me? Ish? Whedon's politics are conflicted at best; on the one hand, Buffy and Firefly were, despite their flaws, quite feminist and progressive shows, on the other hand, Dollhouse. But moreover, he has this strong libertarian streak but he's now writing a show about a secretive government organization that occasionally kidnaps people and presumably does worse off-stage. This could be really interesting, and at the moment it's enough to keep me watching to see what develops, but it is, as the kids say, Highly Problematic.
I *should* have liked the last episode. It had a libertarian villain who was essentially Evil!Not Hot!Tony Stark spouting Ayn Rand, and a decent twist ending.
But all characters save Coulson and possibly May are, yes, incredibly bland. I mean, Coulson is kind of bland too, but that's the point of him. Everyman works for exactly one character, not five. Everyman should definitely not be the quirkiest character in an ensemble show, WTF? Even the tragic backstories are cliché. Can we not have better trauma?
Also, after three episodes which had, in sequence 1) an out-of-control dangerous black man, 2) evil Latin Americans, and 3) POC henchmen and arm candy, I'm starting to think that the show has some skeevy race issues. See further Firefly's lack of Asians, Buffy's lack of Latinos, and Gunn needing a brain upgrade on Angel.
Also, Skye is a terrible, terrible character. She's Gwen from Torchwood only not very good.* She seems to exist only to say stupid things (she was pro-Shining Path/anti-mining activists/which are the same thing amirite? in the second episode because they were sticking it to the Man, only to change her mind when someone she know got hurt, and then in this latest one she had to provide the pro-billionaire philanthropist perspective which, what?). I do not believe that a "hacktivist" would not know a single thing about infiltration or lockpicking. This is not something that requires extensive research. It requires ONE (1) trip to any hackerspace anywhere or conversely, hanging out on BoingBoing for about 30 seconds if you're utterly lazy. Hackers do not see a locked door and go, "umm it's locked what do I do now?"
I am also sad because Rising Tide is a pretty good sekrit hacker organization name, and it is being wasted on a bad show.
Incidentally, here is how to fix the show:
1. Lose everyone but Coulson and possibly May and Fitz (because he has a nice accent and the thing with the monkey was reasonably funny).
2. Hire uglier actors with more personality.
3. Make the show like Trigun. (Which, if you haven't seen it, is about a guy with insanely destructive superpowers who gets followed around by two insurance adjusters who want to account for all of the damage he leaves in his wake when he's trying to save the world. It's also a Christ allegory but it's the bit with the insurance adjusters that I liked best.) Essentially, have it be about regular people trying to do good in the presence of gods and monsters. Regular as in non-powered, not regular as in boring. Blowing up shit is cool on the big screen; now let's see a story about the people who have to mop up after the destruction.
4. Get the conflict between the institution and the individual more blatant and throw some decent writing at it, not just a frank exchange of clichés.
* See what I did there?
I am mostly watching because new Joss show and I'm willing to give it half a season in the hopes that it gets good, and also because there's a temporary TV void in my life while everything I like is either ended or on hiatus. And also because I enjoy mocking it, but it'd be nice to have something good to watch.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-10-11 02:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-11 02:13 am (UTC)Also she lives in a van but has perfect hair. Why? Where is she showering?
no subject
Date: 2013-10-11 07:08 am (UTC)Several times in fact.
Still haven't watched the show.
I did like Dollhouse though, mostly since the show grew out of the initial squicky premise into something quite amazing.
no subject
Date: 2013-10-11 10:56 am (UTC)Fortunately, I have lots of friends (and some students) who are into Who, so I can geek out IRL and with my select online posse without having to wade through the communities.
Gwen is the weakest link in an otherwise decent cast. They should have killed her off instead of Suzie. I guess genre shows need to have a viewpoint character, but that's generally the character I like least (see also Crichton on Farscape). I also didn't much care for Captain Jack in Torchwood as compared to the same character on DW; he works way better as a sidekick than a team leader.
The show is worth watching. S1 is terrible but kind of fun, S2 is exactly the right kind of terrible to be hilarious. (The first episode has a pufferfish stealing a sports car and Jack making out with Spike from Buffy.) Children of Earth is actually brilliant, but it hits a number of my triggers and I don't feel a huge need to watch it again. Though I think it should be mandatory viewing for anyone who works in education.
Miracle Day is so resolutely terrible on every possible level that it's worth watching because
I gave Dollhouse a whole season plus a few episodes and I couldn't get over the skeevy presence or the blandness of all the characters.
no subject
Date: 2013-10-11 01:59 pm (UTC)And Gwen. Gwen Gwen Gwen. The fact that everyone seemed to fall in love with her was irksome enough but I think I soured on her completely in the pair of episodes where she accidentally killed the old murderer who ran on her knife (and cried about it - even though the script made it clear that he was an irredeemable sociopath) and had the drop on the cannibal killers and instead of using the gun, just handed it over because it wasn't in her or something like that (and note that these guys living means that she and all her friends get murdered by them).
If her back story was flower seller or accountant, I could buy that. But she is supposed to be a cop. Even in Britain, they are trained in deadly force.
I keep hearing that Children of Earth is good, even for people who hate the show, so I will have to check it out.
no subject
Date: 2013-10-11 05:27 pm (UTC)Where do you get that idea?
Most British cops will never handle a gun.
There are less than 7000 Authorised Firearms Officers, out of 135 000 Police Officers - around 5%.
In order to become an AFO, they have to be recommended for, take and pass specialized training. Most cops will never go through any of that.
Gwen was a beat cop, so it would make no sense for her to have that kind of training.
Being upset because she killed someone? Seems pretty fucking credible and human to me.
no subject
Date: 2013-10-12 01:48 pm (UTC)You are dead right about Jack, which is why I loved him on DW and thought he was boring to watch on TW.
Gwen wouldn't be awful if they just picked one interpretation of the character and stuck with it. Sometimes she was a complete badass, sometimes she was a weepy load on the rest of the team, and if this had been an indication of character depth, that would have been fine, but it wasn't.
Children of Earth is absolutely brilliant. It's not the same show at all; it's played deadly serious with no camp, the surviving characters from the series are well-written, and the characters they introduced managed to break my heart. It's got this commentary on the education system and standardized testing that's probably the best I've seen outside of The Wire. I genuinely wept buckets.
It would have been okay to end it there, but then they went on to make Miracle Day, which has absolutely nothing to recommend it.
Since she brought it up (and since I *know* you *must* be curious) ...
Date: 2013-10-13 08:20 am (UTC)I'm blushing!
Date: 2013-10-13 08:18 am (UTC)Thanks, Sabs!
no subject
Date: 2013-10-14 12:49 am (UTC)Akk! The pressure it ... causes pressure!
Date: 2013-10-16 03:50 am (UTC)On the other hand, you've reminded me that my long-promised review of this year's Series "finale" (ha!) is still only a promise ... Sigh, better get to it. Just as soon as I tell you why Breaking Bad's finale wasn't as good as you (and nearly everyone else) seems to have thought.
O! the pressure ...!
no subject
Date: 2013-10-16 10:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-11 12:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-12 01:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-18 03:25 pm (UTC)After Dollhouse Satan will be skating to work before I want to watch another Whedon series, which is sad because Buffy and Angel were the shows of my heart. Saw Firefly again and it held up better, altho I couldn't tell whether that was nostalgia or my being desperate for something good to watch that wasn't about white guys dealing meth or writing ads or killing people.
Sleepy Hollow looks interesting, but half my flist was cracking up over how the resurrected Elizabethan-era (?) hottie was speaking Middle English. Whoopsie.
-- kore on Dreamwidth
no subject
Date: 2013-10-18 08:49 pm (UTC)Sleepy Hollow looks like fun; I fully don't mind anachronisms in a cracky show. Or even in a serious show.
no subject
Date: 2013-10-12 12:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-12 01:42 pm (UTC)The main issue I had with it is that it has an animation style that I found really dated and goofy looking. A testament to how amazing the story and characters are is that I got over that in an episode or two. It's not very long; you can probably burn through it in a weekend like I did.
no subject
Date: 2013-10-14 04:11 am (UTC)Still haven't seen his Much Ado....
no subject
Date: 2013-10-14 04:13 am (UTC)