Fringe: Over There II

I caved. Ep review ahoy. Much like BSG, I expect this to be wordy and badly organised cus I'm outta practice. Y'ALL HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Okay so, I mostly liked this episode. ( General overviewy stuff. )

Okay, so my general enjoyment stated, I'm gonna start with the few things that ticked me off to get them out of the way.

( I did not like: Olivia/Peter Romance. )

( PEOPLE I MISSED. )

Okay, Stuff I Didn't Like done with, now I'm going to go on to Stuff That Doesn't Make Sense:

( What the hell is up with the universe-hopping... Seriously I don't even understand what I'm saying here. SKIP THIS BIT. )

UGH, OKAY, THAT DONE WITH, MORE INTERESTING THINGS.

( Peter. )

( Walter (and Bell). )

OLIVIA. OH OLIVIA I LOVE YOU. SO VERY MUCH. NEVER STOP BEATING THE SHIT OUT OF OTHER PEOPLE IN FISTFIGHTS EVEN IF THOSE OTHER PEOPLE ARE YOU.

( OLIVIA! )

Okay, finally, MEGA SCOOP ON SEASON THREE. LOOK AWAY NOW IF YOU DON'T WANT A DECODED SECRET MESSAGE THE PRODUCERS PUT ON A CHALKBOARD.

( SUPERSEKRIT MESSAGES. )

So there you have it. I loved it quite a lot, but more for what it's promising me next season, both explicitly and in the underlying subtext than for what it actually delivered. Though what it delivered was, in places, arresting.

Doctor Who: The Silurian One Part One (and a bit of a rant about Welsh)

...meh. I mean, it's always nice to see Meera Syal on my TV screen, but frankly the rest was not very engaging. The general plot just didn't grab me, there wasn't enough Amy and even if they don't go the way of one of the savage humans killing Alaya, or even if that plot point would have been interesting otherwise, I kind of got irked when the doctor's FIRST approach was to make a rousing speech to the humans so they didn't murder a hostage. Yes, they're angry, I get that. And yes, okay, Ambrose (what a weird name for a girl) committed the cardinal sin of putting a cricket bat in her van, but seriously? Mo being all, "let's dissect it!" felt really forced and out of character. It was a real strawman moment and now if they kill Alaya instead of being a dramatic and horrible moment, it'll feel very forced.

Also, one day, ONE DAY, this show that is produced and filmed in Wales, will have an episode set in Wales, where an actual Welsh person speaks ACTUAL WELSH. Oherwydd ma cryn dipyn ohonyn ni erbyn hyn, onest, BBC.

And then I will die of shock.

(Side note: there is a very, very bad bilingual pun on the side of the meals-on-wheels van. "Pen-y-fan" is the name of a local mountain in the Brecons. "Fan" in the mountain name is a mutation of "man" which means place. "Fan" is pronounced "Van" and means..."Van" in Welsh (we are imaginative when we steal English words, you see). And it's on a van. With little wheels under it. So the logo looks like a van. Or maybe they're just near that mountain and it's just a groan-worthy coincidence. YMMV.)

But seriously, why does no one in this show ever speak Welsh? I know that it's not the commonest language, and yes, if all the episodes were set in sleepy exclusively Welsh-speaking villages that would be both an inaccurate depiction and also no fun for the viewer. But the producers say they want to make the most of the location and they obviously do go out of their way to set a few episodes in Wales.

So given that ~20% of the population and growing is fluent, would it be THAT HARD to have someone chatting in the background, or to have the mother casually say something to her kid in the pre-credits sequence? I mean, to use this episode as an example, Nia Roberts - the actress playing Ambrose - is a Welsh speaker, a fairly well-known one too (she starred opposite Ioan Gruffudd in Solomon a Gaenor).

I know, I know, I sound like a broken record, but it's kind of important to me. Most of the time when I meet non-Welsh people, their assumption is that Welsh is a dying language. Or, you get gits like James Corden - co-writer of Gavin & Stacey (a comedy series set partially in Barry, outside of Cardiff) who says shit about how the Welsh language hasn't "caught on" because he's never met a Frenchman who couldn't speak French. (And like, okay, first of all it isn't even true that it's not catching on, and second, it's fucking insulting to suggest that Welsh needs to "catch on" like it's some sort of fad and English is the original language; making it sound the nation adopted English as its primary language because it was just that awesome and being outlawed, punished and generally derided had nothing to do with it).

I know, globally, it's a small issue. But it really pisses me off. I'm kind of ready for Wales to stop being the punchline of a joke in most of the mass media.

(Aside, I would be interested in what my Scottish flisters have to say, but my impression of English* attitudes to Scotland has always been that they are aggressive/dismissive/make fun because they are a bit intimidated/threatened, whereas with Wales it always feels they wish we'd stop embarrassing ourselves by pretending we have a culture. But I'd be curious to know if that lines up with how you feel - I suspect it may not.

*by this I do not mean to accuse individual English people, many of whom are lovely and not mean about Wales at all, but I have to describe my experience of broad attitudes somehow.)

AND, in case anyone believes me after that rant, honestly, even if they'd been speaking Welsh the WHOLE TIME, I still would have thought the episode was a bit boring. I hope it livens up next week, so far this season has been pretty good.