In the first season, when they were building up Massive Dynamic as the villain, there was a lot of focus on Massive Dynamic's power and wealth and its involvement in many of the cases being investigated. In one episode, I forget which, I am pretty sure someone explicitly said Massive Dynamic was more powerful and/or richer than some nations. The dangerous science, although often descended from individual mad scientist Walter Bishop's initial research, developed into something dangerous with corporate backing. Even when Massive Dynamic offered help, there was a price tag on it -- the possibility of developing trade relations (i.e., exploiting) Indian tribes in the Amazon, or bringing down the stock price of a rival corporation.
In Season Two, with the general efforts to rehabilitate William Bell's image, there's been much less focus on this and many more instances of individual scientists producing monsters in their basement labs. That's a narrative I'm a lot less interested in.
I think the girlkissing was exploitative, but I liked it anyway. I'm not sure how thoughtful the show is about gender -- my previous experience with J.J. Abrams is Star Trek and Alias. And in Alias he had a lot of powerful female characters -- who mostly worked against each other, or were isolated from each other in mostly male networks, and the subplots always enforced a deeply conservative idea of family and loyalty. So I tend to think of Abrams as someone who shares some of my character kinks, but can't be relied upon to sustain gender subversion on multiple narrative levels. But that means when he gives me something extra, I am pleased and surprised.
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Date: 2009-12-11 09:08 pm (UTC)In Season Two, with the general efforts to rehabilitate William Bell's image, there's been much less focus on this and many more instances of individual scientists producing monsters in their basement labs. That's a narrative I'm a lot less interested in.
I think the girlkissing was exploitative, but I liked it anyway. I'm not sure how thoughtful the show is about gender -- my previous experience with J.J. Abrams is Star Trek and Alias. And in Alias he had a lot of powerful female characters -- who mostly worked against each other, or were isolated from each other in mostly male networks, and the subplots always enforced a deeply conservative idea of family and loyalty. So I tend to think of Abrams as someone who shares some of my character kinks, but can't be relied upon to sustain gender subversion on multiple narrative levels. But that means when he gives me something extra, I am pleased and surprised.