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Life on Mars mostly-nonspoilery squee post
That sound you hear is my fangirl soul being sucked down into another black hole. :D
We've just mainlined the first season of Life on Mars (thank you, Derry!) and it's awesome. It's like CSI: David Lynch with a nigh-impenetrable Manchester accent.
I have fallen completely and utterly for Sam and Gene. I keep telling myself that I really should not like Gene as much as I do. He's an ass in pretty much every way: a violent, crude, mysogynist thug. But he's, uh. A very likable thug? And then there's Sam, with his woobiness and his constant struggle to do the right thing in the face of ubiquitous corruption and betrayal. And together, they're ♥ ♥ ♥.
Gene: I think you've forgotten who you're talking to.
Sam: An overweight, over-the-hill, nicotine-stained, borderline alcoholic homophobe with a superiority complex and an unhealthy obsession with male bonding.
Gene: (slight pause) You make that sound like a bad thing.
I love how they handle 1973 as a real place with its own issues and a cultural climate that's very different from what Sam's used to in 2006, in all its little details: the way everyone is smoking all the time, the way that Sam is the only one who treats Annie like a person and listens to her ideas, since he's internalized the idea of working as equal partners with female co-workers in a way that no one around him has. I also love the way that death, corruption and violence are a normal part of their lives, and yet the show doesn't cheapen or trivialize it. You aren't allowed to forget that the murder victims, drug dealers and domestic terrorists that they deal with are real human beings, with families. The main characters themselves are so flawed -- when you have an episode about a cop on the take, or one who accidentally caused the death of a suspect in custody, it's not some random guest star who was brought on so that the lily-white main characters could find them out; it's people we know and (mostly) care about who are doing these things, struggling with their own consciences, dragging each other down or lifting each other up. I love their messy, dark, hilarious, tragic world.
I'm currently avoiding fan sites so as not to be spoiled for season 2 until we get done with that (which, at the rate we're going, shouldn't take very long), but if any LoM fans on my flist could point me to good fic or vids that are safe from S2 spoilers, that would be lovely!
Edit: And this probably goes without saying, but I thought I'd mention it because I have had to enforce my "no spoilers" policy lately -- please don't spoil me for S2 in the comments if you can help it. I won't kick you out, but I'll be very unhappy. I'm sure I'll be done with it very soon and we can talk about it then. :D
We've just mainlined the first season of Life on Mars (thank you, Derry!) and it's awesome. It's like CSI: David Lynch with a nigh-impenetrable Manchester accent.
I have fallen completely and utterly for Sam and Gene. I keep telling myself that I really should not like Gene as much as I do. He's an ass in pretty much every way: a violent, crude, mysogynist thug. But he's, uh. A very likable thug? And then there's Sam, with his woobiness and his constant struggle to do the right thing in the face of ubiquitous corruption and betrayal. And together, they're ♥ ♥ ♥.
Gene: I think you've forgotten who you're talking to.
Sam: An overweight, over-the-hill, nicotine-stained, borderline alcoholic homophobe with a superiority complex and an unhealthy obsession with male bonding.
Gene: (slight pause) You make that sound like a bad thing.
I love how they handle 1973 as a real place with its own issues and a cultural climate that's very different from what Sam's used to in 2006, in all its little details: the way everyone is smoking all the time, the way that Sam is the only one who treats Annie like a person and listens to her ideas, since he's internalized the idea of working as equal partners with female co-workers in a way that no one around him has. I also love the way that death, corruption and violence are a normal part of their lives, and yet the show doesn't cheapen or trivialize it. You aren't allowed to forget that the murder victims, drug dealers and domestic terrorists that they deal with are real human beings, with families. The main characters themselves are so flawed -- when you have an episode about a cop on the take, or one who accidentally caused the death of a suspect in custody, it's not some random guest star who was brought on so that the lily-white main characters could find them out; it's people we know and (mostly) care about who are doing these things, struggling with their own consciences, dragging each other down or lifting each other up. I love their messy, dark, hilarious, tragic world.
I'm currently avoiding fan sites so as not to be spoiled for season 2 until we get done with that (which, at the rate we're going, shouldn't take very long), but if any LoM fans on my flist could point me to good fic or vids that are safe from S2 spoilers, that would be lovely!
Edit: And this probably goes without saying, but I thought I'd mention it because I have had to enforce my "no spoilers" policy lately -- please don't spoil me for S2 in the comments if you can help it. I won't kick you out, but I'll be very unhappy. I'm sure I'll be done with it very soon and we can talk about it then. :D
no subject
Re-watching the first episode, I was really struck by how different Sam was in his own time...
It's definitely there, that whole thing, but they manage to do it so that 1973 doesn't feel like an Important Lesson Sam Tyler Must Learn. It's more... that's who he was, and here's what he's got to work with, and this is who he is now. And then one can enjoy the process, painful as it may be for poor Sam. But it's not like you can see a definite goal of "this is how Sam should be", because... well, that's not what it's about.
Hee~! Gene and Sam's relationship - thinking about them is making me grin. Oh, I've got it bad! But how could I resist, when you've got that kind of... partnership? In that they're probably the last person the other would have picked to work with, but now that they're forced together, they're so good for each other. I mean, they even have the co-punch! It always amuses me greatly when they do that.
It is a really lovely show to look at, though. It's an incredibly viddable show -- there are so many dramatic shots and they do so much with camera angles and lighting and so forth.
Oh, is it ever! It's almost impossible to make icons for, because once you start looking for interesting shots, you've got them coming in hard and fast and you can't really take a cap every ten seconds for an hour. But you want to! Um. I might be speaking from experience, here. *g*
But! I can't even describe how amazing it is, it's just - I'll have to be weird and to a comment picspam of LoM caps to show you what I mean.
Here - the scene with Sam and Annie on the roof. The climactic moment is shot from three different POVs, and they're all so interesting.
It's dynamic and it's there, focused on the most important things, and not just recording the character's faces or bodies. It's got the long drop and the sky high above and the sun and the hands meeting and just that speaks volumes, even before the actors have done anything.
And then there's stuff like - hello, symbolism!
The next time we see Sam's bathroom mirror, it's not cracked anymore. INTERESTING.
There's lots and lots of angst going on here, but - look how the camera is placed as if it were a spectator. Not a camera, recording objectively - it makes you feel like you're actually there. It's so immediate and... and raw, even though you don't have a close-up of Sam's face here:
More angst, and everything is a little skewed, isn't it? Sam is breaking down, and the camera sees him - but the camera seems a little shaken by what's going on, too, the way it gives the impression of the whole world listing to the side a bit:
This shot, I just like. So much. Because of Sam and the light and the way we can't see his face, but it's so clear that he's dealing with a whole bunch of emotions, and... And I think I'm running out of comment space now. *g*
no subject
The next time we see Sam's bathroom mirror, it's not cracked anymore. INTERESTING.
Was that his bathroom? I assumed it was the bathroom at the gym or pool or wherever they were trying to catch the mostly naked guy.
It's definitely there, that whole thing, but they manage to do it so that 1973 doesn't feel like an Important Lesson Sam Tyler Must Learn. It's more... that's who he was, and here's what he's got to work with, and this is who he is now.
Yes! I love that! It's nothing so simplistic as "Sam must learn to care" or "Sam must teach the boorish cops of 1973 a lesson" or anything like that. It's more that they're all trying to survive the best way they know how, and incidentally becoming slightly better people along the way (with a lot of backsliding, yet).
no subject
Was that his bathroom? I assumed it was the bathroom at the gym or pool or wherever they were trying to catch the mostly naked guy.
Went back to check, and - yep, it's his mirror! He wakes up and goes in there to shave. So~. I say it means something. Or else it's just a very cool shot? With this show, it's hard to tell, and that's all part of the fun.
It's more that they're all trying to survive the best way they know how, and incidentally becoming slightly better people along the way (with a lot of backsliding, yet).
Nobody's perfect, everyone's human, and it's not always easy to tell what the right thing is. If there is a right thing. And Sam has to deal with the whole time-travel thing on top of the general issues of framing people who are guilty in general but innocent of this particular crime and such.
Ahh, it's making me really curious - things like how he interacts with the guy who goes on to become his mentor. Is it a time loop? Did Glenn Fletcher take Sam under his wing because he remembered this weird Taylor guy back in the early seventies, or... or is it all in his head? Because there are so many ways it could all be in his head (he has a hooligan related case to solve when the nurses have left the TV on the big game playing in his room; he's got a hostage crisis where someone will die at 2 PM when he thinks they'll shut off his life support at 2 PM), and there are so many ways it could all be real.
Things like - the very first ep, with the little kid who might grow up to be a copycat serial killer, and meeting Glenn, and how he let Vic run away, never to return... but in that particular case it can't be a loop, because adult Sam in 1973 still has the memories of being kid!Sam and seeing his dad assault a woman in a red dress - something that didn't happen the way Sam remembers it, now that Annie was fine and Sam went back inside. At the same time - Sam told Ruth what to tell kid!Sam, and what she says is word for word what he remembers...! Ahh, it's so smart and twisty, with so many layers!