Urgh, I'm so sorry your show is being bad to you. *hugs*
I actually could have seen a lot of potential in the idea of Peter (now that he knows the truth) remembering and loving an Olivia who doesn't remember him, and having to gently win her back. That's what he did with Walter this season, after all, more or less: took a version of Walter who didn't know him or like him, and slowly won him over. It was really sweet and low-key, and I liked it a lot.
This? NO. Just, no. I can even think of much less skeevy ways they could have framed this -- Olivia being too far gone to go back, say, or Olivia choosing her Blueverse life because she cherishes those memories and being that person, and doesn't want to lose it again. But in the context of the episode, it was explicitly, blatantly framed as "Olivia chooses romantic love over all the other relationships in her life", with very heavy subtext of "Olivia values herself as a person less than she values being in love, and that is a good thing". ICK. ICK. ICK.
Not to mention the loving vs. being in love thing, which I found a really ugly way of reducing human relationships to two binary, mutually exclusive poles when it just isn't that simple at all! I missed some of that conversation at the time, and thought I must have missed something important, because surely they weren't saying what I thought they were saying? But no, that's really what they meant. Making it a metaphor for Lincoln vs. Peter - trying to cram the characters into those boxes, regardless of what viewers might see in them - makes it even worse.
Especially as this was framed as "Olivia chooses this freely" when this makes no rational sense in light of Olivia Dunham's characterisation over the course of the seasons.
... hmm, could you explain this some more? I do see it as being a choice she made freely, even though I think it is a very stupid, misogynistic decision on the writers' parts to have her make that choice. I think that you summed it up really well in your comment above with "she just didn't intellectually care because she was emotionally tied up" - her current infatuation with Peter is blinding her to some of the negative consequences of the choice she's making, but it's still a consensual choice.
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I actually could have seen a lot of potential in the idea of Peter (now that he knows the truth) remembering and loving an Olivia who doesn't remember him, and having to gently win her back. That's what he did with Walter this season, after all, more or less: took a version of Walter who didn't know him or like him, and slowly won him over. It was really sweet and low-key, and I liked it a lot.
This? NO. Just, no. I can even think of much less skeevy ways they could have framed this -- Olivia being too far gone to go back, say, or Olivia choosing her Blueverse life because she cherishes those memories and being that person, and doesn't want to lose it again. But in the context of the episode, it was explicitly, blatantly framed as "Olivia chooses romantic love over all the other relationships in her life", with very heavy subtext of "Olivia values herself as a person less than she values being in love, and that is a good thing". ICK. ICK. ICK.
Not to mention the loving vs. being in love thing, which I found a really ugly way of reducing human relationships to two binary, mutually exclusive poles when it just isn't that simple at all! I missed some of that conversation at the time, and thought I must have missed something important, because surely they weren't saying what I thought they were saying? But no, that's really what they meant. Making it a metaphor for Lincoln vs. Peter - trying to cram the characters into those boxes, regardless of what viewers might see in them - makes it even worse.
Especially as this was framed as "Olivia chooses this freely" when this makes no rational sense in light of Olivia Dunham's characterisation over the course of the seasons.
... hmm, could you explain this some more? I do see it as being a choice she made freely, even though I think it is a very stupid, misogynistic decision on the writers' parts to have her make that choice. I think that you summed it up really well in your comment above with "she just didn't intellectually care because she was emotionally tied up" - her current infatuation with Peter is blinding her to some of the negative consequences of the choice she's making, but it's still a consensual choice.