beckerbell (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beckerbell) wrote2012-04-27 01:53 pm
beckerbell) wrote2012-04-27 01:53 pm
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I think I'm back down to, like, 2.9/10ths again.
→ I'm tempted to do that 100 Things challenge for my teevee watching lately, like maybe that would actually get me to regularly post again! But I fear that might involve effort. D:
→ This post is the most perfect encapsulation of what a daily experience tumblr is like that I have ever seen. I experience every single one of those emotions on tumblr every fucking day.
→ So, THE MENTALIST left me feeling almost bored this week. Cho/Summer continues to be pretty cute, but you could really feel Jane's lack of presence in this episode. He hardly got up to much of anything, which left me feeling... well, almost bored. And we've still got three episodes to go with this season, but it looks like next week isn't going to be about Red John at all (unless it's only lightly touched on), I'm getting a bit antsy. Not drop the series antsy, but not thrilled, either. I'm anxious for the Red John stuff at the end of the season!
→ I have watched seven episodes of GRIMM now. I still can't tell if I like it or not.
→ It looks like FRINGE was renewed for a fifth (and final) season, which I'm sad to lose the show, of course, but also glad that they know its their last and can write a proper ending. Now I just have to catch up on it. orz
→ Because I promised Siobhan, I picked up MAGI again (after letting it languish for, like, six months) and it feels good to be really interested in a manga series again! Okay, to be fair, I was reading HOLiC again before this, but I actually LIKE Magi! Certainly, it's one of those shounen-style series that has a lot of highly addictive action and great characters and super hot guys that you want to smoosh their faces together.
But it's also nice to see a female fighting type in the main cast of characters, who isn't a slender girl, but who actually has muscles when she kicks the shit out of everything in her path! I imagine it helps that the Magi mangaka is a woman, which always makes me instantly more fond of a series. Mostly, though, I've just been introduced to Sinbad in this series and as;ldkfjaslkj I am in love.
This is the first time we see this new character, sleeping in the desert when some bandits stumble over him. He looks like quite the easy mark!
We don't see what happens in that instance, we switch back to Aladdin and Morgianna, our main characters, who are still searching for Alibaba, our other main character. THEN WE RUN INTO THIS MYSTERIOUS CHARACTER AGAIN:
I laughed pretty much forever, because THAT'S SINBAD FOR YOU.
It gets even more hilarious when they all get back to town and his two advisors are like, "......wat." and their lives are SO HARD, you guys. They have to deal with this guy ALL THE TIME.
→ I've been catching up on xxxHOLiC but all I had to say about it (so far, I still have a volume left to go) is here.
→ I've been catching up on episodes of AWAKE and, boy, I continue to have a lot of thoughts about stuff. Which means SPOILERS--I'm not quite current, I still have two more episodes to current and one episode from the middle of the run (ugh, I am doing myself such a disservice watching it the way I am, I know) but it's episodic enough that I'm doing okay so far.
I was all proud of myself during the kidnapping episode (1x03 - "Guilty") because I thought, oh! The world with Rex has to be the dream episode because he got the address in the Hannah world, which would not work at all if the Hannah world was the dream world. Except then I thought about it for a few more days and realized, oh, no, wait. The same logic applies that they've been using all along--he could have seen that address in the case he worked ten years ago and this was his subconscious' way of bringing it up again.
But I still do think that there are only two options here--either both worlds are real or the Rex one is the dream one. The serial killer episode (1x05 - "Oregon") seemed to hint at it--it wasn't until after the FBI agent was called in and said there was always a two dollar bill that this world found a way to work that in. Sure, it could have been a coincidence, but it did feel a lot like dream logic.
It's also that the conspiracy against Britten is only in Hannah's world. But also the push for change--the change that Britten really doesn't want to face--is in Hannah's world as well. It makes sense to me because Rex's world has his comfortable partner instead of the new guy that's always on his case, it has him growing closer to Rex in a way that he wants while he faces more trouble in connecting genuinely with Hannah. In 1x05, especially with Mountain Top Movers, it felt like the Hananh world influenced the Rex world.
So. If the Rex world turns out to be the real one, while Hannah is a dream, I'm going to be ticked at feeling like they wrote themselves into a corner but wanted a last minute surprise twist. But I can handle either option of Hannah being the real one or both are real.
I don't think we're going down the road of this being an actual scifi series, where Britten is in two worlds at once. I think we are supposed to view this as a man who's on the edge of a break from reality, who has invented a second world because he couldn't accept the loss of one of his family. The show has been careful to compare him to other mentally unstable characters, showing that there are a lot of similarities there. And I'm fine with them not revealing the reality, that they're hinting here and there, that we're always supposed to mostly know which way is up, but maybe have a few lingering doubts. That aspect of the show I really like.
What I'm not wild about is how well this show may be able to or may not be able to sustain itself. There's only so long this fantasy can go on, only so long Britten can keep putting himself through the wringer like this, before it gets old or stretches past the point of credulity (even giving the show some artistic license).
If this were a show that was only destined to run, let's say, two years (maybe three at most, but that would be pushing it), I could be fine with it. But where is all of this going? When you have a high concept show like this, if you don't know where you're going, you end up like LOST and I loved that show once upon a time, but they totally lost the plot in the end. On the other hand, given the ratings, that may not be a concern, sigh.
→ I am totally caught up on REVENGE (which means SPOILERS), which I continue to love the hell out of. It's a bit like Awake in that I wonder where it's going, how long it can keep going on the premise it established early on, no matter how many twists and turns it throws into the mix, but I'm certainly going to enjoy the ride along the way.
One of the things I do like about this series is something I read on The AV Club and I agreed with a lot--this show does not take death lightly. Very few bodies have dropped in this series and, when they do, it's something that causes a lot of ripples all across the pond. Tyler's death has made huge waves, of course, but so did Frank's and now the new lackey's will as well, I imagine. For all that it's a rather dramatic show and occasionally indulges in some soapiness, it also doesn't just go ridiculously wild with it, either.
And, hey, I have to give this show that I, like the AV Club reviewer, have apparently never watched any television before, because I thought Daniel was trying to hang himself, too. I don't know why I didn't really think too hard about it, it's not like this isn't a tricky show, I mean, he's there for murdering Tyler when the beginning of the series had us all thinking that it was Daniel who was going to die that night!
I've also seen speculation that some people think David Clarke is still alive and I can't say the thought hasn't passed through my mind, either. We've only seen him at the beach house before everything went to shit, we've only seen him in interview tapes, etc. We never saw his death or the body. This isn't the show's fault, because it's only shown us scenes that are directly related to the machinations at hand or that are from a key player's memory. David Clarke isn't there to be a narrator, so we don't see his scenes. I suspect that's all it is, but the audience has seen too many shows where no body almost always eventually means that person is alive.
I don't think he is, I think it's just the show's structure that has kept his death from being shown, that we'll eventually get there, but I also can't lie. I kind of wish he was alive, because that would be pretty awesome. (Even if they would need to come up with a good reason for why he would stay hidden and not find his daughter.)
One thing that does kind of bother me about the most recent episodes is that I've felt like its just tredding water--while, yes, the Grayson family name continues to sink further and further, while she's pulling threads out to fray at the edges, there hasn't been an episode where someone has paid for their involvement in her father's demise in quite some time. It's starting to feel a bit like we're tredding water in her revenge and I realize that's part of the whole point of the show--revenge is never simple or uncomplicated. A plot like this will always have uncontrolled reactions that send everyone into chaos and she's going to have to spend a lot of time cleaning those messes up.
But it's not as satisfying as seeing tangible results, especially when Emily has so much dirt on the Graysons already--she has confessions of jury tampering, of ordering a hit to kill someone, implications of what happened with her father, probably enough to get the authorities to open up the case again--but she's going to hold onto it all because she wants even more revenge on the Graysons, especially after the reveal of this episode.
Which, I understand, I guess. But part of me feels like... if this show goes down the road of having her lose all that evidence at some point, if she has to start over with digging up dirt on them, I'm going to be super frustrated. If she has enough now but wants to put her own spin on her revenge? Okay, yes, sure, I can buy that. But if she loses her chance to take them down and we have to go back to square one? UNSATISFYING. I WANT RESULTS.
Though, I don't think I want everyone to find out that she's Amanda Clarke in the finale of this season, I think that's something you need to keep for s2 or s3. But I do find myself hoping for some sort of shake-up that actually has lasting consequences in this world, something to make me feel like this show could last a few years.
→ This post is the most perfect encapsulation of what a daily experience tumblr is like that I have ever seen. I experience every single one of those emotions on tumblr every fucking day.
→ So, THE MENTALIST left me feeling almost bored this week. Cho/Summer continues to be pretty cute, but you could really feel Jane's lack of presence in this episode. He hardly got up to much of anything, which left me feeling... well, almost bored. And we've still got three episodes to go with this season, but it looks like next week isn't going to be about Red John at all (unless it's only lightly touched on), I'm getting a bit antsy. Not drop the series antsy, but not thrilled, either. I'm anxious for the Red John stuff at the end of the season!
→ I have watched seven episodes of GRIMM now. I still can't tell if I like it or not.
→ It looks like FRINGE was renewed for a fifth (and final) season, which I'm sad to lose the show, of course, but also glad that they know its their last and can write a proper ending. Now I just have to catch up on it. orz
→ Because I promised Siobhan, I picked up MAGI again (after letting it languish for, like, six months) and it feels good to be really interested in a manga series again! Okay, to be fair, I was reading HOLiC again before this, but I actually LIKE Magi! Certainly, it's one of those shounen-style series that has a lot of highly addictive action and great characters and super hot guys that you want to smoosh their faces together.
But it's also nice to see a female fighting type in the main cast of characters, who isn't a slender girl, but who actually has muscles when she kicks the shit out of everything in her path! I imagine it helps that the Magi mangaka is a woman, which always makes me instantly more fond of a series. Mostly, though, I've just been introduced to Sinbad in this series and as;ldkfjaslkj I am in love.
This is the first time we see this new character, sleeping in the desert when some bandits stumble over him. He looks like quite the easy mark!
We don't see what happens in that instance, we switch back to Aladdin and Morgianna, our main characters, who are still searching for Alibaba, our other main character. THEN WE RUN INTO THIS MYSTERIOUS CHARACTER AGAIN:
I laughed pretty much forever, because THAT'S SINBAD FOR YOU.
It gets even more hilarious when they all get back to town and his two advisors are like, "......wat." and their lives are SO HARD, you guys. They have to deal with this guy ALL THE TIME.
→ I've been catching up on xxxHOLiC but all I had to say about it (so far, I still have a volume left to go) is here.
→ I've been catching up on episodes of AWAKE and, boy, I continue to have a lot of thoughts about stuff. Which means SPOILERS--I'm not quite current, I still have two more episodes to current and one episode from the middle of the run (ugh, I am doing myself such a disservice watching it the way I am, I know) but it's episodic enough that I'm doing okay so far.
I was all proud of myself during the kidnapping episode (1x03 - "Guilty") because I thought, oh! The world with Rex has to be the dream episode because he got the address in the Hannah world, which would not work at all if the Hannah world was the dream world. Except then I thought about it for a few more days and realized, oh, no, wait. The same logic applies that they've been using all along--he could have seen that address in the case he worked ten years ago and this was his subconscious' way of bringing it up again.
But I still do think that there are only two options here--either both worlds are real or the Rex one is the dream one. The serial killer episode (1x05 - "Oregon") seemed to hint at it--it wasn't until after the FBI agent was called in and said there was always a two dollar bill that this world found a way to work that in. Sure, it could have been a coincidence, but it did feel a lot like dream logic.
It's also that the conspiracy against Britten is only in Hannah's world. But also the push for change--the change that Britten really doesn't want to face--is in Hannah's world as well. It makes sense to me because Rex's world has his comfortable partner instead of the new guy that's always on his case, it has him growing closer to Rex in a way that he wants while he faces more trouble in connecting genuinely with Hannah. In 1x05, especially with Mountain Top Movers, it felt like the Hananh world influenced the Rex world.
So. If the Rex world turns out to be the real one, while Hannah is a dream, I'm going to be ticked at feeling like they wrote themselves into a corner but wanted a last minute surprise twist. But I can handle either option of Hannah being the real one or both are real.
I don't think we're going down the road of this being an actual scifi series, where Britten is in two worlds at once. I think we are supposed to view this as a man who's on the edge of a break from reality, who has invented a second world because he couldn't accept the loss of one of his family. The show has been careful to compare him to other mentally unstable characters, showing that there are a lot of similarities there. And I'm fine with them not revealing the reality, that they're hinting here and there, that we're always supposed to mostly know which way is up, but maybe have a few lingering doubts. That aspect of the show I really like.
What I'm not wild about is how well this show may be able to or may not be able to sustain itself. There's only so long this fantasy can go on, only so long Britten can keep putting himself through the wringer like this, before it gets old or stretches past the point of credulity (even giving the show some artistic license).
If this were a show that was only destined to run, let's say, two years (maybe three at most, but that would be pushing it), I could be fine with it. But where is all of this going? When you have a high concept show like this, if you don't know where you're going, you end up like LOST and I loved that show once upon a time, but they totally lost the plot in the end. On the other hand, given the ratings, that may not be a concern, sigh.
→ I am totally caught up on REVENGE (which means SPOILERS), which I continue to love the hell out of. It's a bit like Awake in that I wonder where it's going, how long it can keep going on the premise it established early on, no matter how many twists and turns it throws into the mix, but I'm certainly going to enjoy the ride along the way.
One of the things I do like about this series is something I read on The AV Club and I agreed with a lot--this show does not take death lightly. Very few bodies have dropped in this series and, when they do, it's something that causes a lot of ripples all across the pond. Tyler's death has made huge waves, of course, but so did Frank's and now the new lackey's will as well, I imagine. For all that it's a rather dramatic show and occasionally indulges in some soapiness, it also doesn't just go ridiculously wild with it, either.
And, hey, I have to give this show that I, like the AV Club reviewer, have apparently never watched any television before, because I thought Daniel was trying to hang himself, too. I don't know why I didn't really think too hard about it, it's not like this isn't a tricky show, I mean, he's there for murdering Tyler when the beginning of the series had us all thinking that it was Daniel who was going to die that night!
I've also seen speculation that some people think David Clarke is still alive and I can't say the thought hasn't passed through my mind, either. We've only seen him at the beach house before everything went to shit, we've only seen him in interview tapes, etc. We never saw his death or the body. This isn't the show's fault, because it's only shown us scenes that are directly related to the machinations at hand or that are from a key player's memory. David Clarke isn't there to be a narrator, so we don't see his scenes. I suspect that's all it is, but the audience has seen too many shows where no body almost always eventually means that person is alive.
I don't think he is, I think it's just the show's structure that has kept his death from being shown, that we'll eventually get there, but I also can't lie. I kind of wish he was alive, because that would be pretty awesome. (Even if they would need to come up with a good reason for why he would stay hidden and not find his daughter.)
One thing that does kind of bother me about the most recent episodes is that I've felt like its just tredding water--while, yes, the Grayson family name continues to sink further and further, while she's pulling threads out to fray at the edges, there hasn't been an episode where someone has paid for their involvement in her father's demise in quite some time. It's starting to feel a bit like we're tredding water in her revenge and I realize that's part of the whole point of the show--revenge is never simple or uncomplicated. A plot like this will always have uncontrolled reactions that send everyone into chaos and she's going to have to spend a lot of time cleaning those messes up.
But it's not as satisfying as seeing tangible results, especially when Emily has so much dirt on the Graysons already--she has confessions of jury tampering, of ordering a hit to kill someone, implications of what happened with her father, probably enough to get the authorities to open up the case again--but she's going to hold onto it all because she wants even more revenge on the Graysons, especially after the reveal of this episode.
Which, I understand, I guess. But part of me feels like... if this show goes down the road of having her lose all that evidence at some point, if she has to start over with digging up dirt on them, I'm going to be super frustrated. If she has enough now but wants to put her own spin on her revenge? Okay, yes, sure, I can buy that. But if she loses her chance to take them down and we have to go back to square one? UNSATISFYING. I WANT RESULTS.
Though, I don't think I want everyone to find out that she's Amanda Clarke in the finale of this season, I think that's something you need to keep for s2 or s3. But I do find myself hoping for some sort of shake-up that actually has lasting consequences in this world, something to make me feel like this show could last a few years.