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More TV (well, mostly Sanctuary, big surprise)
I have certainly been getting my money's worth out of Netflix this month. Watched the first season of Slings & Arrows on a friend's recommendation (I loved it; it's completely adorable) and finished marathoning Sanctuary -- yes, I have now seen it all, except for a couple of episodes in season one that I've only seen parts of (Folding Man and Warrior, specifically).
I believe I may have severely underrated Sanctuary's addictiveness. *g* I think I have a small crush on Henry now, to go with my crush on Tesla. And I'm very much looking forward to new episodes in April!
Because most of my flist seems to have hated it (with reason, I think) the final episode I watched was Hero II, which, since I just watched it, I have Thoughts about:
Okay, I liked Hero quite a bit, actually. There were things I didn't like about it, particularly the fact that the main characters have no leg to stand on when it comes to criticizing other people for running about doing the vigilante thing; it made so much more sense to figure out a way to work with Walter and maybe help train him to do his thing without accidentally hurting people, rather than being all "We must stop him!" from the beginning (even before his general ineptitude becomes apparent). And the episode was also guilty of the "point and laugh at the geek" subtext that so many shows do; I find Henry's comic geekiness utterly adorable, but I do hate that, even within the show, it's this nerd thing that the other, "cooler", archetypically non-nerdy characters raise their eyebrows at. (If nothing else, I will love SGA forever for having both of its main male leads geek out on comics and sci-fi, including the cool action-hero one.)
But aside from that, it was cute and fun, and one thing I loved about Hero was that Walter was given all this power and what he did with it was try to make the world a better place.
Which made the subtext in Hero II all the uglier, really. Walter gets the suit and immediately tries to be a hero, even though he's not good at it. Kate gets the suit and ... takes revenge on her enemies and beats up her friends. There was some half-assed attempt to explain it with Helen's comment that the suit is affecting Kate's brain, but it doesn't have that effect on Walter, so WTF. I'm totally down with an episode about one character being adversely affected by something-or-other and attacking their friends -- I love that trope, actually! -- but if it's been shown not to have that effect on other people, we're left with the inescapable fact that what we're seeing here is how Kate reacts to being given a lot of power. And it's ugly.
And the final insult is that in the end, the whole thing -- Kate getting the suit and running all over town being supervillainy -- is setup for Walter's hero arc: he gets to do the whole heroic sacrifice thing and then work together with Helen to take down the bad guy, while Kate is totally sidelined.
That's just ... I mean, way to commit utter character assassination on Kate and take away her agency all at the same time!
What's frustrating about it is that I like Walter and I really wanted to enjoy his little zero-to-hero arc, but I couldn't let go of the way that the whole thing was at Kate's expense.
The cute little "home" conversation with Kate and Helen at the end, while nice, doesn't make up for the other unpleasant subtext in the episode.
But that's a depressing note to end my Sanctuary viewing on; perhaps I should go back and rewatch some episodes featuring Tesla or Henry to perk myself up. Or "Breach", which is probably my favorite Helen episode to date.
This entry is also posted at http://friendshipper.dreamwidth.org/310080.html with
comments.
I believe I may have severely underrated Sanctuary's addictiveness. *g* I think I have a small crush on Henry now, to go with my crush on Tesla. And I'm very much looking forward to new episodes in April!
Because most of my flist seems to have hated it (with reason, I think) the final episode I watched was Hero II, which, since I just watched it, I have Thoughts about:
Okay, I liked Hero quite a bit, actually. There were things I didn't like about it, particularly the fact that the main characters have no leg to stand on when it comes to criticizing other people for running about doing the vigilante thing; it made so much more sense to figure out a way to work with Walter and maybe help train him to do his thing without accidentally hurting people, rather than being all "We must stop him!" from the beginning (even before his general ineptitude becomes apparent). And the episode was also guilty of the "point and laugh at the geek" subtext that so many shows do; I find Henry's comic geekiness utterly adorable, but I do hate that, even within the show, it's this nerd thing that the other, "cooler", archetypically non-nerdy characters raise their eyebrows at. (If nothing else, I will love SGA forever for having both of its main male leads geek out on comics and sci-fi, including the cool action-hero one.)
But aside from that, it was cute and fun, and one thing I loved about Hero was that Walter was given all this power and what he did with it was try to make the world a better place.
Which made the subtext in Hero II all the uglier, really. Walter gets the suit and immediately tries to be a hero, even though he's not good at it. Kate gets the suit and ... takes revenge on her enemies and beats up her friends. There was some half-assed attempt to explain it with Helen's comment that the suit is affecting Kate's brain, but it doesn't have that effect on Walter, so WTF. I'm totally down with an episode about one character being adversely affected by something-or-other and attacking their friends -- I love that trope, actually! -- but if it's been shown not to have that effect on other people, we're left with the inescapable fact that what we're seeing here is how Kate reacts to being given a lot of power. And it's ugly.
And the final insult is that in the end, the whole thing -- Kate getting the suit and running all over town being supervillainy -- is setup for Walter's hero arc: he gets to do the whole heroic sacrifice thing and then work together with Helen to take down the bad guy, while Kate is totally sidelined.
That's just ... I mean, way to commit utter character assassination on Kate and take away her agency all at the same time!
What's frustrating about it is that I like Walter and I really wanted to enjoy his little zero-to-hero arc, but I couldn't let go of the way that the whole thing was at Kate's expense.
The cute little "home" conversation with Kate and Helen at the end, while nice, doesn't make up for the other unpleasant subtext in the episode.
But that's a depressing note to end my Sanctuary viewing on; perhaps I should go back and rewatch some episodes featuring Tesla or Henry to perk myself up. Or "Breach", which is probably my favorite Helen episode to date.
This entry is also posted at http://friendshipper.dreamwidth.org/310080.html with
no subject
It's qualified only because I'm not the best at remembering details like this, but that is certainly my impression. Nevertheless, I'm still a little peeved about the way Kate's agency was stripped away--the plot could easily have worked for me if just a couple of things had been different.
no subject
And yeah, it's really frustrating, because they would've only had to change a few things to make it fun goofy escapist entertainment (like the first Hero was for me) rather than a big ball of DO NOT WANT.