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beccatoriaSARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES! NOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Damn that's depressing and off-pissing if not actually surprising. :(
Now what the hell am I supposed to watch? *sigh*
Also. Agent Ellison. I barely knewmy crush on you.
In my ongoing search for thinky SciFi about technology and our relationship with it, I have, however, discovered Fringe.
NO! COME BACK! WHERE ARE YOU ALL GOING?!
So like, it's JJ Abrams, and if his previous entries into the genre are any indication then
1) about three seasons in it will go off the rails.
2) the science will be completely inexplicable and unrealistic.
3) it will be arcy and mostly unapologetic about its sci-fantasy roots.
My reaction to this is:
1) maybe this time he'll get it right, because there are two other people involved and I'm currently kindly disposed towards the guy cus of Star Trek?
2) I don't really care if it's inexplicable and unrealistic (see BSG) if it's consistant within the constructed fictional world and is being used to have an interesting conversation on the topic.
3) YAY!
I'm not such a huge fan of the episodic nature of it, but at least I only find half of the "storylines of the week" actively boring and the characters and the sense that it's building toward something carries me through it.
This show desperately wants to be The X-Files and kind of isn't, but largely in a good way, I think? And the precedent of The X-Files may allow it better and freer reign over its mytharc from the beginning?
There is a tragic lack of robots, obvs, but one thing that surprised me about this show was quite how much it does delve into our relationship with science and technology because I was expecting a far more...X-Filesian aliens/creepy/conspiracy-type angle.
Of course, the fact that they keep circling back to how damn SCARY technology can be and the way "harmless" and "funny" Walter is actually shown very often to be pretty terrifying in terms of what he does without considering the consequences, and the fact that the Bad Guys who think Technology Will Kill Us But We Must Use It may in fact not be as "bad" as we think DOES make me worry I'm setting myself up for disappointment of the "LET'S THROW IT INTO THE SUN!" variety.
And that my conviction that the show is not as binary but is, instead, attempting a conversation more like Cylonicity in that 1) technology wants to kill you but 2) technology is inescapable and kind of awesome (albeit at this point a conversation either less sophisticated or more likely just not aimed via as many of my kinks: see humanoid robots) is like much like believing Adama was meant to be that much of a jackass.
But...whatever. I'm kind of...intrigued. If only because scifi shows so rarely used to have these conversations (the technology ones in the X-Files were always rarer and rarely connected to the mytharc unless they were alien which in the language of that show was essentially "mystical"). Which sounds counterintuitive, but in terms of televised scifi I really think it's true. Technology either serves us and is safe and enlightened or has run amok and hunts us and kills us and there isn't really much conversation between the two. Same as movies have moved away from Good Guy/Bad Guy binaries since the 40s (which is not to say that many of the tropes this created, like the angsty loner jackass aren't highly irritating), I do wonder if visual SciFi is, in conjunction with our snowballing technological development, coming to a similar relationship with this theme?
The 90s saw the acceptance of televised SciFi as a place to include politics and characterisation. With shows like BSG and TSCC and now Fringe (and if we stretch it back to the very turn of the decade, even Farscape, while generally not a show about tech did have a very prominent storyline about that) are the 2000s the era of our increasing ability to discuss our cyborgification?
Says she who is basing this entirely on the shows she can remember watching at various times which is hardly a scientific sample.
Peter: I'm only starting with him cus he's boring. Sorry Pacey fans, but he's just...he's Pacey with angst pasted on and I don't really care much. FORTUNATELY he really dosn't do that much except make the same tired quips about his father and then, I dunno, call up a dodgy contact to get hold of something useful once every two episodes. I hope the show never tries to make him interesting, or if they do they actually make him interesting rather than hoping I'll give a crap about him as things stand. If what I've heard about the finale is true, it has the potential to 1) unfortunately make him a far more significant character within the story of the series (how dare they make one of their three leads important! :p) but 2) again oddly objectifies him? I'm sure I'll have to put up with ANGST about it but in terms of the relationships the show currently has set up, it makes him important for reasons that are...very disempowering to Peter, actually.
Walter: Okay, I understand that the man is a walking cliche. Every scene he'll be like, "I can think of two things," and then he'll say the first one and it'll be vaguely useful and then he'll stop and then someone will be like, "What's the second thing?" and he'll be like, "I want a [insert food item/other random thing here]."
But I kind of don't care and love him anyway. I think because half the time the random shit he says really is kind of funny and I haven't watched enough of it yet for him to become a parody of himself. And because as derivative as it might be in concept, their execution of him as the mad scientist who is alternately harmless and really fucking creepy is quite good. For which I credit the actor because, really, Denethor from Lord of the Rings but going from that dark, brooding mode to vulnerable and confused and all to easy to laugh at and then back is quite a compelling cocktail on screen.
I really do think the actor plays the mix of understanding exactly what he's done and the horror of it and understanding none of it quite well. And I think it's interesting to make the "good guy scientist" so ominous in many ways.
Olivia: I really like Olivia! I think I realised it a few episodes in when I thought to myself, "You know, if they were playing the emotionally invested, to hell with proceedure! FBI Agent trope and she was a guy, this would soooooo piss me off. And yet, I love her!"
In the episode where I realised they were reversing the gender stereotype for the episode, I actually kind of realised that because her line to Broils was something like, "Let's ignore for a minute that you're accusing me of being overly emotional, which is ALWAYS what men say to their female colleagues... [insert rant about how her emotional investment makes her a better agent]."
So it's not like they didn't hang a lantern on it, but it did work because I thought to myself...if it was a guy standing there making that speech about, well, as I said, TO HELL WITH PROCEEDURE! I AM BOSS! I would have been so blaaaaaaaaah. But somehow, this made me love it. I think partly, yeah, because it's fun to see the stereotype reversed and how it plays on someone else. But also because it's not just the stereotype. It's the character. And this was a reminder that part of her character just is this set of traits and storylines that more frequently get given to guys. So like, she quite frequently gets into fist fights and knife fights and has to shoot people and break people in interviews and have angsty "I had to protect my family!" backstories and be first on scene while her male scientist co-workers hang back and snark or act crazy.
And what I think I like about it is that this is done without ceremony. There's no Buffylike, Farscapelike or even BSGlike meta-message from the show that LOOK! A GIRL! A GIRL IS KICKING THE ASS OF A GUY! Because that one line - which I really felt managed to come from the character not the show itself - was the one fairly quiet signal they sent to me and the show just trundles on.
Which again...I'm definitely not trying to set this show up as a paragon of gender politics. It's not. I don't really know if it's saying much about gender or if it ever will (though it might). I just...really like this thing and think this is a nice example of managing to support the portrayal of awesome women in TV even if it's not a stated goal. Olivia Dunham really just feels like she is and what she is is pretty awesome.
Plus, as y'all know, I have a kink for non-traditional domestic family situations so I loved it when her sister and her niece moved in with her and they are all cute and nuclear-family-like except not quite. I'm sure that they'll have said sister move out or be less in the show or something but at the moment, I love that mini D-plotline.
Astrid: I like Astrid. I would like for her to get to do more, but at least she gets to be blunt at Walter sometimes. But yeah. She needs to do more. Even freakin' Charlie has gotten an episode about him by this point. Where's the love for Astrid? Her and Walter should become a detective duo.
Shipping: I have a horrible feeling I'm supposed to ship Peter and Olivia. Instead I ship Olivia and just about EVERYONE ELSE EVER except Walter (cus eeew) and Peter. Mostly I guess if I had to pick and play the "pair everyone up game," I'd pair up Peter and Astrid (I'd be okay with the thing Peter seems to have for Olivia's sister - in fact I'd love it if not for the fact that I think it's probably just setting up a love triangle of boredom) and Olivia and Broils. But honestly, I'm not really in this for the shipping. Mostly I just hope that I don't end up ANTI-shipping the show's OTP cus that can be annoying.
Nina Sharpe: Ooooh look, the requisite eeeevil middle-aged woman who wants to seduce our young heroine away to a life of corporate management or some shit. I only mention her cus having seen like...15 episodes of this show I will BET YOU MONEY that she's bad news and will be the villain rather than the ambiguous helper or something in season 2 or 3 or something. Which is cool cus she's interesting and has a robot arm, but I'm just saying.
And there is my opinion on Fringe since apparently this is the only show I've been left with. *sigh*
In other news, I think my next vidding project will be Farscape. Which will probably take me an embarassingly long time since a) I can't start on it yet and b) I don't know that footage all that well. Because I've wanted to make this vid for a while and I think the break will do me good.
After that I have some plans to return to BSG because, well, I'm not done with it yet, I guess? It's kind of strange, since the finale changed my relationship with the show a bit more than I was expecting, I feel a little odd about some of the vid-bunnies I had before it, but then I got this whole other mess of them instead. So I can't promise to make all those vids I was gonna make, but...I'm still of the mind that attempting a positive approach to remembering the good bits is the most productive way forward, so if my post-finale mind is going to throw these ideas at them, I'm gonna trust my subconscious and try to do them justice and see how they make me feel.
Just like I had a vidding love affair with The National, I think I've now moved on to Sage Francis. So over the next few months, I'm planning to make three vids to him. One about John Crichton and Guns, one about Laura and her habit of breaking up with Lee and Kara, or rather, making Lee and Kara break up with her, and one about Sam Anders. Probably in that order. Unless I change my mind.
And we're done. Wow, it's been a long time since I had this much to say... o_O
Damn that's depressing and off-pissing if not actually surprising. :(
Now what the hell am I supposed to watch? *sigh*
Also. Agent Ellison. I barely knew
In my ongoing search for thinky SciFi about technology and our relationship with it, I have, however, discovered Fringe.
NO! COME BACK! WHERE ARE YOU ALL GOING?!
So like, it's JJ Abrams, and if his previous entries into the genre are any indication then
1) about three seasons in it will go off the rails.
2) the science will be completely inexplicable and unrealistic.
3) it will be arcy and mostly unapologetic about its sci-fantasy roots.
My reaction to this is:
1) maybe this time he'll get it right, because there are two other people involved and I'm currently kindly disposed towards the guy cus of Star Trek?
2) I don't really care if it's inexplicable and unrealistic (see BSG) if it's consistant within the constructed fictional world and is being used to have an interesting conversation on the topic.
3) YAY!
I'm not such a huge fan of the episodic nature of it, but at least I only find half of the "storylines of the week" actively boring and the characters and the sense that it's building toward something carries me through it.
This show desperately wants to be The X-Files and kind of isn't, but largely in a good way, I think? And the precedent of The X-Files may allow it better and freer reign over its mytharc from the beginning?
There is a tragic lack of robots, obvs, but one thing that surprised me about this show was quite how much it does delve into our relationship with science and technology because I was expecting a far more...X-Filesian aliens/creepy/conspiracy-type angle.
Of course, the fact that they keep circling back to how damn SCARY technology can be and the way "harmless" and "funny" Walter is actually shown very often to be pretty terrifying in terms of what he does without considering the consequences, and the fact that the Bad Guys who think Technology Will Kill Us But We Must Use It may in fact not be as "bad" as we think DOES make me worry I'm setting myself up for disappointment of the "LET'S THROW IT INTO THE SUN!" variety.
And that my conviction that the show is not as binary but is, instead, attempting a conversation more like Cylonicity in that 1) technology wants to kill you but 2) technology is inescapable and kind of awesome (albeit at this point a conversation either less sophisticated or more likely just not aimed via as many of my kinks: see humanoid robots) is like much like believing Adama was meant to be that much of a jackass.
But...whatever. I'm kind of...intrigued. If only because scifi shows so rarely used to have these conversations (the technology ones in the X-Files were always rarer and rarely connected to the mytharc unless they were alien which in the language of that show was essentially "mystical"). Which sounds counterintuitive, but in terms of televised scifi I really think it's true. Technology either serves us and is safe and enlightened or has run amok and hunts us and kills us and there isn't really much conversation between the two. Same as movies have moved away from Good Guy/Bad Guy binaries since the 40s (which is not to say that many of the tropes this created, like the angsty loner jackass aren't highly irritating), I do wonder if visual SciFi is, in conjunction with our snowballing technological development, coming to a similar relationship with this theme?
The 90s saw the acceptance of televised SciFi as a place to include politics and characterisation. With shows like BSG and TSCC and now Fringe (and if we stretch it back to the very turn of the decade, even Farscape, while generally not a show about tech did have a very prominent storyline about that) are the 2000s the era of our increasing ability to discuss our cyborgification?
Says she who is basing this entirely on the shows she can remember watching at various times which is hardly a scientific sample.
Peter: I'm only starting with him cus he's boring. Sorry Pacey fans, but he's just...he's Pacey with angst pasted on and I don't really care much. FORTUNATELY he really dosn't do that much except make the same tired quips about his father and then, I dunno, call up a dodgy contact to get hold of something useful once every two episodes. I hope the show never tries to make him interesting, or if they do they actually make him interesting rather than hoping I'll give a crap about him as things stand. If what I've heard about the finale is true, it has the potential to 1) unfortunately make him a far more significant character within the story of the series (how dare they make one of their three leads important! :p) but 2) again oddly objectifies him? I'm sure I'll have to put up with ANGST about it but in terms of the relationships the show currently has set up, it makes him important for reasons that are...very disempowering to Peter, actually.
Walter: Okay, I understand that the man is a walking cliche. Every scene he'll be like, "I can think of two things," and then he'll say the first one and it'll be vaguely useful and then he'll stop and then someone will be like, "What's the second thing?" and he'll be like, "I want a [insert food item/other random thing here]."
But I kind of don't care and love him anyway. I think because half the time the random shit he says really is kind of funny and I haven't watched enough of it yet for him to become a parody of himself. And because as derivative as it might be in concept, their execution of him as the mad scientist who is alternately harmless and really fucking creepy is quite good. For which I credit the actor because, really, Denethor from Lord of the Rings but going from that dark, brooding mode to vulnerable and confused and all to easy to laugh at and then back is quite a compelling cocktail on screen.
I really do think the actor plays the mix of understanding exactly what he's done and the horror of it and understanding none of it quite well. And I think it's interesting to make the "good guy scientist" so ominous in many ways.
Olivia: I really like Olivia! I think I realised it a few episodes in when I thought to myself, "You know, if they were playing the emotionally invested, to hell with proceedure! FBI Agent trope and she was a guy, this would soooooo piss me off. And yet, I love her!"
In the episode where I realised they were reversing the gender stereotype for the episode, I actually kind of realised that because her line to Broils was something like, "Let's ignore for a minute that you're accusing me of being overly emotional, which is ALWAYS what men say to their female colleagues... [insert rant about how her emotional investment makes her a better agent]."
So it's not like they didn't hang a lantern on it, but it did work because I thought to myself...if it was a guy standing there making that speech about, well, as I said, TO HELL WITH PROCEEDURE! I AM BOSS! I would have been so blaaaaaaaaah. But somehow, this made me love it. I think partly, yeah, because it's fun to see the stereotype reversed and how it plays on someone else. But also because it's not just the stereotype. It's the character. And this was a reminder that part of her character just is this set of traits and storylines that more frequently get given to guys. So like, she quite frequently gets into fist fights and knife fights and has to shoot people and break people in interviews and have angsty "I had to protect my family!" backstories and be first on scene while her male scientist co-workers hang back and snark or act crazy.
And what I think I like about it is that this is done without ceremony. There's no Buffylike, Farscapelike or even BSGlike meta-message from the show that LOOK! A GIRL! A GIRL IS KICKING THE ASS OF A GUY! Because that one line - which I really felt managed to come from the character not the show itself - was the one fairly quiet signal they sent to me and the show just trundles on.
Which again...I'm definitely not trying to set this show up as a paragon of gender politics. It's not. I don't really know if it's saying much about gender or if it ever will (though it might). I just...really like this thing and think this is a nice example of managing to support the portrayal of awesome women in TV even if it's not a stated goal. Olivia Dunham really just feels like she is and what she is is pretty awesome.
Plus, as y'all know, I have a kink for non-traditional domestic family situations so I loved it when her sister and her niece moved in with her and they are all cute and nuclear-family-like except not quite. I'm sure that they'll have said sister move out or be less in the show or something but at the moment, I love that mini D-plotline.
Astrid: I like Astrid. I would like for her to get to do more, but at least she gets to be blunt at Walter sometimes. But yeah. She needs to do more. Even freakin' Charlie has gotten an episode about him by this point. Where's the love for Astrid? Her and Walter should become a detective duo.
Shipping: I have a horrible feeling I'm supposed to ship Peter and Olivia. Instead I ship Olivia and just about EVERYONE ELSE EVER except Walter (cus eeew) and Peter. Mostly I guess if I had to pick and play the "pair everyone up game," I'd pair up Peter and Astrid (I'd be okay with the thing Peter seems to have for Olivia's sister - in fact I'd love it if not for the fact that I think it's probably just setting up a love triangle of boredom) and Olivia and Broils. But honestly, I'm not really in this for the shipping. Mostly I just hope that I don't end up ANTI-shipping the show's OTP cus that can be annoying.
Nina Sharpe: Ooooh look, the requisite eeeevil middle-aged woman who wants to seduce our young heroine away to a life of corporate management or some shit. I only mention her cus having seen like...15 episodes of this show I will BET YOU MONEY that she's bad news and will be the villain rather than the ambiguous helper or something in season 2 or 3 or something. Which is cool cus she's interesting and has a robot arm, but I'm just saying.
And there is my opinion on Fringe since apparently this is the only show I've been left with. *sigh*
In other news, I think my next vidding project will be Farscape. Which will probably take me an embarassingly long time since a) I can't start on it yet and b) I don't know that footage all that well. Because I've wanted to make this vid for a while and I think the break will do me good.
After that I have some plans to return to BSG because, well, I'm not done with it yet, I guess? It's kind of strange, since the finale changed my relationship with the show a bit more than I was expecting, I feel a little odd about some of the vid-bunnies I had before it, but then I got this whole other mess of them instead. So I can't promise to make all those vids I was gonna make, but...I'm still of the mind that attempting a positive approach to remembering the good bits is the most productive way forward, so if my post-finale mind is going to throw these ideas at them, I'm gonna trust my subconscious and try to do them justice and see how they make me feel.
Just like I had a vidding love affair with The National, I think I've now moved on to Sage Francis. So over the next few months, I'm planning to make three vids to him. One about John Crichton and Guns, one about Laura and her habit of breaking up with Lee and Kara, or rather, making Lee and Kara break up with her, and one about Sam Anders. Probably in that order. Unless I change my mind.
And we're done. Wow, it's been a long time since I had this much to say... o_O
