Watching the detectives
Oct. 5th, 2011 01:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ariadnes_stringI have watched too much TV in the past week, y'all. This really can’t go on. But, since I did, I might as well give you a brief report:
I have already shared myrant thoughts about Downton Abbey 2x03. Kudos to Julian Fellowes for pinpointing the exact moment in history when it became impossible to sympathize with the British ruling class (Evelyn Waugh notwithstanding).
But I also watched Merlin 4x01, which I loved with an unembarrassed love.
More knights make everything more fun. Arthur being kingly has always turned me to mush, and this episode was wall-to-wall kingly!Arthur. In fact, I watched the episode twice (once by myself, once with the boys), and the second time through I decided they’d done a much needed-reboot on Arthur—or rather decided to start showcasing good qualities he’s always had (filial devotion, being not just brave but a good leader of men, utter devotion to his kingdom) and added a touching ability to admit weakness (panic-attack!Arthur ftw). The fact the Bradley James seems to be maturing into even greater loveliness doesn’t hurt.
And, even though they haven’t gotten past the “Arthur finds out” hurdle, it does seem to help to have Lancelot around knowing about Merlin’s magic—evens things out, as it were. I am so looking forward to next week, b/c no show brings the whump like Merlin.
The boys and I watched Hawaii Five-O 2x03 last night. Many people have already detailed the problems with the episode, so I’ll spare you. It seemed to me mostly a mess—like the writers couldn’t figure out how to make this new team configuration work.
Also, bitter!Kono ripped my heart out. Though I have to say that bitter!Kono was rocking the tight black dress and motorcycle boots combo like nobody’s business. I assume it will be revealed why all this is going on. But hopefully not before she gets a chance to kick Steve in the nuts with the aforementioned boots for being such an ass.
The boys enjoyed it. They liked the skydiving, though we agreed that this would be something not to try at home.
And two new shows, b/c 2011 seems to be the year of creepy stalkers as heroes. Both shows are obsessed, in an classically Foucauldian way, with the way in which the sheer quantity of information we are able to gather about other people only makes us that much more anxious about the things we can’t know—the people who live, and the things that go on, off the grid and under the radar and behind locked doors.
I’ve now watched two episodes of Person of Interest, and the second (1x02) is much better than the first. Jim Cavaziel and Michael Emerson even managed some chilly, lizard-voiced banter with each other, and I approve of the show’s penchant for rendering Cavaziel bloody and battered in an early scene and leaving him that way through the rest of the episode. I actually found the plot pretty interesting and coherent, and I think with just a little more character development the show could spawn some fic. It would be great for xovers with other shows set in NYC. What if the machine spat out Elizabeth Burke’s social security number? Mike Ross’s? What would they make of Reese lumbering around in the shadows.
I watched the first episode of Showtime’s Homeland, and, really, this is the best of the lot. It has a kind of Old Spice cast (“take a look at your cast”—“now look at our cast”—“now look back at your cast”)--Claire Danes, Damian Lewis, Morena Baccarin, Mandy Patinkin)--and a creepy Manchurian Candidate style plot: Lewis is a POW who’s found in Iraq after eight years of captivity; Danes is the CIA analyst who thinks he’s been turned; Baccarin is his wife and Patinkin is her mentor.
It’s all genuinely disturbing. I don’t usually warn about triggers, but you should know the first hour has graphic (naked) torture scenes; voyeurism (since this is Showtime, Danes’s Carrie doesn’t just clone cell phones like the guy in PoI, she illegally wires Lewis’s Brody’s house and watches him and his wife have particularly brutal sex; and mental illness (pace Chekhov, it seems pretty certain that if a character diligently pops Clozapine in the pilot, we are guaranteed either a manic episode or psychotic break somewhere down the line).
Still, the acting and writing are excellent, and I will certainly keep up with this one.
Still listening to Regeneration, and it is just as unrelentingly poignant as I remember. It’s been twenty years since I first read it, and I am now much closer in age to Rivers, the psychiatrist, than I am to the young soldiers he treats, and that has made a re-listen really interesting. It’s also made me want to read other novels that take psychiatrists/psychologists as their protagonists—any suggestions?
I have already shared my
But I also watched Merlin 4x01, which I loved with an unembarrassed love.
More knights make everything more fun. Arthur being kingly has always turned me to mush, and this episode was wall-to-wall kingly!Arthur. In fact, I watched the episode twice (once by myself, once with the boys), and the second time through I decided they’d done a much needed-reboot on Arthur—or rather decided to start showcasing good qualities he’s always had (filial devotion, being not just brave but a good leader of men, utter devotion to his kingdom) and added a touching ability to admit weakness (panic-attack!Arthur ftw). The fact the Bradley James seems to be maturing into even greater loveliness doesn’t hurt.
And, even though they haven’t gotten past the “Arthur finds out” hurdle, it does seem to help to have Lancelot around knowing about Merlin’s magic—evens things out, as it were. I am so looking forward to next week, b/c no show brings the whump like Merlin.
The boys and I watched Hawaii Five-O 2x03 last night. Many people have already detailed the problems with the episode, so I’ll spare you. It seemed to me mostly a mess—like the writers couldn’t figure out how to make this new team configuration work.
Also, bitter!Kono ripped my heart out. Though I have to say that bitter!Kono was rocking the tight black dress and motorcycle boots combo like nobody’s business. I assume it will be revealed why all this is going on. But hopefully not before she gets a chance to kick Steve in the nuts with the aforementioned boots for being such an ass.
The boys enjoyed it. They liked the skydiving, though we agreed that this would be something not to try at home.
And two new shows, b/c 2011 seems to be the year of creepy stalkers as heroes. Both shows are obsessed, in an classically Foucauldian way, with the way in which the sheer quantity of information we are able to gather about other people only makes us that much more anxious about the things we can’t know—the people who live, and the things that go on, off the grid and under the radar and behind locked doors.
I’ve now watched two episodes of Person of Interest, and the second (1x02) is much better than the first. Jim Cavaziel and Michael Emerson even managed some chilly, lizard-voiced banter with each other, and I approve of the show’s penchant for rendering Cavaziel bloody and battered in an early scene and leaving him that way through the rest of the episode. I actually found the plot pretty interesting and coherent, and I think with just a little more character development the show could spawn some fic. It would be great for xovers with other shows set in NYC. What if the machine spat out Elizabeth Burke’s social security number? Mike Ross’s? What would they make of Reese lumbering around in the shadows.
I watched the first episode of Showtime’s Homeland, and, really, this is the best of the lot. It has a kind of Old Spice cast (“take a look at your cast”—“now look at our cast”—“now look back at your cast”)--Claire Danes, Damian Lewis, Morena Baccarin, Mandy Patinkin)--and a creepy Manchurian Candidate style plot: Lewis is a POW who’s found in Iraq after eight years of captivity; Danes is the CIA analyst who thinks he’s been turned; Baccarin is his wife and Patinkin is her mentor.
It’s all genuinely disturbing. I don’t usually warn about triggers, but you should know the first hour has graphic (naked) torture scenes; voyeurism (since this is Showtime, Danes’s Carrie doesn’t just clone cell phones like the guy in PoI, she illegally wires Lewis’s Brody’s house and watches him and his wife have particularly brutal sex; and mental illness (pace Chekhov, it seems pretty certain that if a character diligently pops Clozapine in the pilot, we are guaranteed either a manic episode or psychotic break somewhere down the line).
Still, the acting and writing are excellent, and I will certainly keep up with this one.
Still listening to Regeneration, and it is just as unrelentingly poignant as I remember. It’s been twenty years since I first read it, and I am now much closer in age to Rivers, the psychiatrist, than I am to the young soldiers he treats, and that has made a re-listen really interesting. It’s also made me want to read other novels that take psychiatrists/psychologists as their protagonists—any suggestions?
