Southland 3.06 and White Collar 2.13
Feb. 12th, 2011 07:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ariadnes_stringYou know, the last episode of H50 was so awesome, I had no desire to watch another TV show for days. And so it took me until Thursday and Friday nights to watch the shows that were on on Tuesday.
Southland 3.06
Okay, so that episode was only about a 3 or 4 on the heartbreak scale (though it might have scored higher if the last three hadn’t so radically changed the curve.
It was great to see Cooper in bed with a man, even if only briefly (did live broadcasts have the naked butt shot? Or was that only itunes?). For one thing, because I love the way the show treats his gayness in a kind of glancing way—as something that makes perfect sense, but which they aren’t going to dwell on, or make a plot point out of. For another, because I’m so glad to see Cooper having something nice in his life—I’m just assuming the man in his bed is a nice thing; the guy did look pretty comfortable there—after the misery of last week.
For all the kerfuffle about people not believing Cooper is gay, I’ll just refer you to After Elton’s mock-up of the Southland FB page if you haven’t seen it already.
I felt so bad for the poor guy who had to ride around with Sammy all day. What a nightmare! That guy seemed pretty unflappable, but even he was shoving pictures of his kids’ faces in Sammy’s face by the end and saying “Look. My kids. Who I expect to live to see later tonight. ” Oh well, at least he got to say what we’ve all been thinking about “the crazy white boy thing [Sammy]has going on.” And tell us that Sammy’s street name was “Pacman.” Hee!
And, you know, all credit to Shawn Hatosy. Because even as Sammy is behaving like a lunatic (and unlikeable) asshole, he really makes you understand it, makes it so you can’t just dismiss what he’s doing as just him being a creep.
I feel like on any other show I’d be annoyed by now at the number of horrifyingly mistreated and abandoned kids who cross the screen. But for some reason I’m okay with it on Southland. Partly because the kids aren’t treated sentimentally, and they usually look like real, miserable, pissed-off kids, rather than adorable victimized moppets.
But also because it seems to be such a central part of the show’s point. I think I’ve said this before, but I’m always struck by the degree to which the show is not as much about solving crimes, as it is about law enforcement’s responsibility for the collateral damage in a crime-ridden environment.
So I thought it was completely characteristic and telling that when Cooper and Sherman abandon their post at the celebrity crime scene to “do some real police work,” they don’t end up stopping a robbery or breaking up a fight. They rescue a toddler who’s been left in a house with his dead grandfather. No one to arrest there. The “crime”—that the family is so isolated that no one came looking for either the kid or the grandfather for three days--is the result of such a diffuse set of social circumstances that it’s impossible pin the blame on any one thing. And yet it is still Cooper and Sherman’s responsibility to clean things up and treat the kid with compassion.
And that’s why it was important for Sammy to ventriloquize Nate before he launched into his crazypants “I’m still here” thing: “where I saw assholes, he saw people.”
But aside from all that, I would be happy to watch an entire episode of Lydia and Josie drinking blue drinks and talking about sex and clothes. And I adored Josie’s cold eye for Russ when she told him she didn’t like him.
I’d be grateful if anyone could help me out with my ignorance about two things in that episode: What is RHD? And what was “Crash” (CRASH?)? I feel like I used to know about the latter, but have forgotten….
White Collar 2.13
Oh, White Collar, I feel that you were trying to make me think more than usual this week.
But I’m having none of it. I just want to wallow in Neal and June singing. And dancing.
And contemplate Neal’s hitherto unseen walk-in closet. Which is just about as big as the rest of the apartment put together (and bigger than some places I’ve lived in).
And think about how much I liked that dark print (silk?) shirt Neal was wearing at the dinner party.
But see, here is where I have to start thinking. Because rarely has a show gotten as much mileage out of the adage “clothes make the man” as White Collar. Just in the last three episodes we’ve gotten Neal being turned to a life of high-flying crime partly by the seduction of custom-made suits, a pointed reference to Peter (by Mozzie) as “The Suit”—a nickname that’s always supposed to imply that Peter is completely and negatively defined by his job—a hollow man, as it were--and in this week’s, an elaborate set of symbols involving hat-wearing and dry-cleaning.
(Though I just have to mention that the receipt in the suit pocket was pretty much a red-herring. Ford seemed to already know the table was in the house—and how to work it—without getting the receipt from the furniture store….Not that I’m complaining. As I already mentioned, I fucking loved getting a look at that walk-in closet.)
But yeah, the episode seemed to breathe new life into the old cliché about whether you wear the clothes or let the clothes wear you.
Yes, I am two episodes of SPN down now. And I’ma get right on that. Right after I write up my thoughts on The Eagle.
Southland 3.06
Okay, so that episode was only about a 3 or 4 on the heartbreak scale (though it might have scored higher if the last three hadn’t so radically changed the curve.
It was great to see Cooper in bed with a man, even if only briefly (did live broadcasts have the naked butt shot? Or was that only itunes?). For one thing, because I love the way the show treats his gayness in a kind of glancing way—as something that makes perfect sense, but which they aren’t going to dwell on, or make a plot point out of. For another, because I’m so glad to see Cooper having something nice in his life—I’m just assuming the man in his bed is a nice thing; the guy did look pretty comfortable there—after the misery of last week.
For all the kerfuffle about people not believing Cooper is gay, I’ll just refer you to After Elton’s mock-up of the Southland FB page if you haven’t seen it already.
I felt so bad for the poor guy who had to ride around with Sammy all day. What a nightmare! That guy seemed pretty unflappable, but even he was shoving pictures of his kids’ faces in Sammy’s face by the end and saying “Look. My kids. Who I expect to live to see later tonight. ” Oh well, at least he got to say what we’ve all been thinking about “the crazy white boy thing [Sammy]has going on.” And tell us that Sammy’s street name was “Pacman.” Hee!
And, you know, all credit to Shawn Hatosy. Because even as Sammy is behaving like a lunatic (and unlikeable) asshole, he really makes you understand it, makes it so you can’t just dismiss what he’s doing as just him being a creep.
I feel like on any other show I’d be annoyed by now at the number of horrifyingly mistreated and abandoned kids who cross the screen. But for some reason I’m okay with it on Southland. Partly because the kids aren’t treated sentimentally, and they usually look like real, miserable, pissed-off kids, rather than adorable victimized moppets.
But also because it seems to be such a central part of the show’s point. I think I’ve said this before, but I’m always struck by the degree to which the show is not as much about solving crimes, as it is about law enforcement’s responsibility for the collateral damage in a crime-ridden environment.
So I thought it was completely characteristic and telling that when Cooper and Sherman abandon their post at the celebrity crime scene to “do some real police work,” they don’t end up stopping a robbery or breaking up a fight. They rescue a toddler who’s been left in a house with his dead grandfather. No one to arrest there. The “crime”—that the family is so isolated that no one came looking for either the kid or the grandfather for three days--is the result of such a diffuse set of social circumstances that it’s impossible pin the blame on any one thing. And yet it is still Cooper and Sherman’s responsibility to clean things up and treat the kid with compassion.
And that’s why it was important for Sammy to ventriloquize Nate before he launched into his crazypants “I’m still here” thing: “where I saw assholes, he saw people.”
But aside from all that, I would be happy to watch an entire episode of Lydia and Josie drinking blue drinks and talking about sex and clothes. And I adored Josie’s cold eye for Russ when she told him she didn’t like him.
I’d be grateful if anyone could help me out with my ignorance about two things in that episode: What is RHD? And what was “Crash” (CRASH?)? I feel like I used to know about the latter, but have forgotten….
White Collar 2.13
Oh, White Collar, I feel that you were trying to make me think more than usual this week.
But I’m having none of it. I just want to wallow in Neal and June singing. And dancing.
And contemplate Neal’s hitherto unseen walk-in closet. Which is just about as big as the rest of the apartment put together (and bigger than some places I’ve lived in).
And think about how much I liked that dark print (silk?) shirt Neal was wearing at the dinner party.
But see, here is where I have to start thinking. Because rarely has a show gotten as much mileage out of the adage “clothes make the man” as White Collar. Just in the last three episodes we’ve gotten Neal being turned to a life of high-flying crime partly by the seduction of custom-made suits, a pointed reference to Peter (by Mozzie) as “The Suit”—a nickname that’s always supposed to imply that Peter is completely and negatively defined by his job—a hollow man, as it were--and in this week’s, an elaborate set of symbols involving hat-wearing and dry-cleaning.
(Though I just have to mention that the receipt in the suit pocket was pretty much a red-herring. Ford seemed to already know the table was in the house—and how to work it—without getting the receipt from the furniture store….Not that I’m complaining. As I already mentioned, I fucking loved getting a look at that walk-in closet.)
But yeah, the episode seemed to breathe new life into the old cliché about whether you wear the clothes or let the clothes wear you.
Yes, I am two episodes of SPN down now. And I’ma get right on that. Right after I write up my thoughts on The Eagle.
