TeeVee (part one)

[meganbmoore]

Arrow 1.10-1.13: This show's devotion to getting at least one actor from every geeky show ever to guest star at least once continues to amaze me. I'm currently rooting for them to dunk either Kathleen Munroe or Gloria Votsis's hair in some red hair dye so I can finally have some Barbara Gordon on my screen. (Preferably as Laurel's BFF, and not making one of her comic book BFFs be a romantic rival like they did with Helena.)

I very much appreciated Diggle's shirtless workout scene. (More than I do Oliver's, really. Boy is pretty, but not my type.)

Four episodes and no Walter? Hmph. Also starting to worry they might off Moira, which will peeve me as she and Laurel are my favorites.

I'm glad they finally called Oliver on his terrible excuses to fake Felicity his personal search engine. (I'd say that at this point, he might as well make her an official part of Team Arrow, but I'm still annoyed that both Diggle and Helena found out about Oliver being The Hood before Laurel and Thea.)

Not sure yet about the angst/fridging of Mama Merlyn as an explanation of Tommy and his father's issues. Tommy is starting to feel more like a character and less like an attempt to incorporate the Smallville triangle dynamic, but I'm still not very fond of him.

I'm glad I'm FINALLY getting the Laurel/Thea potential bonding scenes I've been wanting since the pilot. And that Laurel is starting to take on a more active role, even if both Oliver and her father are trying to sideline her. Also, I hope she has really good homeowner's insurance.

BBBBBBBBBBBBOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO for apparently writing out Joanna (even if they annoyingly weren't bothering to do anything with her.) Though maybe we're getting a couple more WOC for recurring characters?

The island scenes bore me now that we're past "is it all in Oliver's head?" except for when Byron Mann is around.



Bomb Girls 2.1-2.6: It makes me happy to think that we're only halfway through the season, but have already had as many episodes as we had for the whole first season.

The end of episode 6 did not make me happy, though. NNnnnnnnnoooooooo. You made me like James when i didn't want to, and then you kill him. Hmph. It was expected though. And who knows, maybe not permanent.

Actually, I really really hope he pops up alive, not so much for him but because I rather loathe Lorna's son, and his relationship with Gladys was basically EVERYTHING I hate about "wild guy gets uppity rich girl to live and unbend" and nothing about the trope that ever manages to be good (Especially the whole "keep chasing after a girl no matter how many times she shoots you down because you obviously know what she wants better than she does" thing, which was about 80% of that relationship.) and if James is really gone for good, I'm pretty sure they're going to revisit that. (Besides, we already have Betty and Kate to unbend Gladys. We don't need to add an annoying guy to that mix.)

Marco, you are forbidden to manage to be successful in your attempts to join the army. You and the guy who helps Kate with her singing are the only males left on the show who don't annoy me, and if you go, you might be replaced by someone even more annoying than Lorna's son.

I'm glad we have more POC this season, even if their roles are still pretty small. Hopefully they'll do more with the WOC on the line in the remaining episodes.

I was worried that they were stepping away from Betty/Kate, but they've thankfully cycled back to it in the latest episode, and Betty also finally got some action. TBH, I'm not entirely certain they'll make it canon, simply because Kate will have to work through her prejudices before we really know what she's suppressing there, if anything. But the whole plotline (including Betty's stint at trying to be straight) remains almost depressingly realistic (I mean, aside from the fake identities and covering up and killing, that is) which is part of what makes it good.

Betty being German was totally out of left field, but was a great bit overall.

I'm liking Lorna more than I did last season. I mean, I didn't DISLIKE her before, she just didn't gel with me like the other girls did, but her decisions always made sense to me and were largely interesting, even when they were bad choices. Mostly, I'm glad that, like Vera, she's given the same degree of sympathy and complexity as the other girls, where she'd normally be a borderline antagonist at best, and Vera would be the slutty girl trying to reach the top. But I'm liking what they're doing with both characters so far. (Now if only they wouldn't play Carol so close to being a straight up rich mean girl.

Elementary 2.11-2.15: At this point, part of me thinks Watson is still with Holmes because she's training him to be her personal valet.

Especially when he all but literally stood at after she yelled at him to come upstairs and he came running.

As much as I enjoyed Holmes's particular brand of denial, I was dissatisfied with how that was resolved. On the one hand, she clearly isn't hurting for money, and she stayed because she genuinely believed Holmes would lose it if she left, but I didn't like that what she did was one of Holmes's suggestions, even if it was actually real (IMO) and not because she wanted to stay with him specifically.

I wasn't really impressed with that episode overall, though? Maybe if I had more investment in Sherlock Holmes in general and thus got an automatic thrill at Moriarty. It did make me even more convinced that Irene faked her death, and did it in a way guaranteed to mess Holmes up enough that he wouldn't have it together enough to find out it was fake.

Watson/Holmes interactions continue to be a delight. For the most part, he seems to have returned to general button pushing as opposed to invading her privacy specifically like he was doing some towards the end of the first half of the season which is good, and seems generally accepting of it when she calls him on things. Out of curiosity, does anyone know how much actual possibly-romantic-shipping of them there is? I ask because while I know there ARE shippers (I mean, they're m/f partners developing a somewhat symbiotic relationship...it's going to happen just like fandom is going to latch on to any 2 white men who are partners/bff), I see people talking about how everyone is shipping it more than I actually SEE anyone shipping it. I'm actually not sure I KNOW anyone shipping it. (And think that, with the way the show is shaping up, it would be really really odd if the show did ever go there.)

Kari Matchett and John Hannah were nice and interesting brief additions. I knew Hannah was coming, but was blindsided by Matchett and so had to pause so I could flail around for a bit when she showed up.

I'm glad we're finally getting a few cases that aren't about murders.

Haven 3.11-3.13: Well, that was a much better cliffhanger ending than last season, but I suppose that isn't really that hard to accomplish. But oh, does this show make it hard to keep liking it at times.

My anger re: Claire is...kind of blinding. I was actually accidentally spoiled for it when the episode aired, which is why I didn't watch it for a while. GAH. Though at least her relationship with Audrey was real. But still, GAH.

I'm glad Jordan came back instead of disappearing forever after being rejected by Nathan, but I suppose that if we see more of her after that, she'll be a straight up antagonist.

We got fewer answers than I wanted, but more than I expected. We STILL don't know who/what Audrey really is, which is what I really wanted. Hopefully we'll have even more flashbacks to Audrey's past selves last season. Like Lucy and the Chief on cases. And, well, I thought it was pretty obvious that Vince and/or Dave was either with The Guard or had created it even if active involvement may have been over.

I'm probably in the minority here, but I actually wish Audrey HAD chosen the greater good over Nathan, or even Duke? (After all, it doesn't have to be ROMANTIC love, and it would have continued the tradition of Audrey's various selves killing all the Crocker men.)

The Bolt Gun Killer's identity was another obvious one, but at least they did manage to finally make that plotline a bit more interesting towards the end there. (Also, I guess learning you're a skinwalker really did play out as creepily as I was thinking it had to. Though I wonder how much of Arla's first kill was deliberate, and how much was her Trouble controlling her and doing what it had to do. I mean, you aren't going to go as far as she did unless you have something seriously off with you to start with, but I think anyone who went through that would come out of it severely changed.)

Also, no, show, I still do not find it romantic that Nathan hooked up with Audrey's past self while knowing an enormous amount of stuff about her that she didn't know-including that she wasn't even who she thought she was. I actually found it creepier revisiting it.

(Oh, and another gas leak, really? One of three things is going on here: the residents of Haven are very dense, there's a Troubled who has a brainwashing power who is employed fulltime to make people believe that, or it's accepted code for "supernatural stuff just went haywire again, but the town didn't blow up this time" and no one talks about it. Normally I'd say it's number 3, especially since they seem to get the lighthouse rebuilt pretty quickly all the time, but you never know.)

Once Upon A Time 1.10-1.12: I liked 2.10 a lot. Yes, a lot of it was setup, but it was about the stuff I cared about and the flashbacks were something I've been wanting more of. I expected to like 2.11 a lot and mostly did, but it let me down due to headbangy fail in the flashbacks. I liked bits of 2.12 but I dislike both Rumples and Whale and find Whale thoroughly boring, and so multitasked through much of it.

-At last! Some development on the Snow/Regina front! It's always amazed me how little they've explored that when that conflict is the core of the show. (Almost as much as it amazes me how the writers can like Belle as much as they obviously do, yet blatantly have no respect for her.) I'm choosing to still interpret that as Regina having hated Snow even more because Snow could never completely hate her (unless a curse was helping with it).

-2.10 certainly was catering to Emma/Regina shippers, wasn't it? It'll be great to see what happens next there.

-I was really anticipating the Belle/Mulan team up, but then we have the white woman reading a few chapters in a book and suddenly have a better understanding of an ability to track a mythic Chinese creature than a Chinese woman who's a trained warrior? UGH. At least Mulan finally had decent hair?

-And I suppose the writers can only treat Belle with any respect if it's at the expense of a woman of color? Because it becomes more obvious with every episode that they don't care about her agency or what's good for her, and to the show, she's just an object in Rumples's non-redemption plot. (And, seriously, what has he EVER done to make her think there's good in him? Not let her crack her head open when she fell off the latter? Because other than that, it's mostly been him being evil, scheming, plotting, etc.) I hope we see her bond more with Red and Grumpy (both of whom she primarily has good memories of, and I was glad to see Grumpy getting worked up when she was brought to the hospital) before they inevitably make her amnesia be all about Rumples's angst (oh wait, they already did).

-I have no idea what they're planning to do with Hook now, unless they're planning to keep Rumples out of town for a while and have him do something to make other people think it might be a good idea to have him around. (Rumples! Let Emma get some sleep before you drag her off! The poor woman is probably still getting over the 3 or 4 days of no sleep that she went through at the tail end of last season and beginning of this season.)

-The househunting was kind of meh, but I am enjoying the cramped living spaces adventures. (Poor Emma probably really was scarred for life there. And unlike most of us who accidentally do that, she isn't young enough to forget.)

-I did enjoy the Red and Whale bit (not something I thought I'd ever say) but it didn't make up for how boring I found almost every other scene with him.

-But I LOVED the Cora and Regina scenes (And that, contrary to both fan and character expectations, Regina reacted with the desire to set things straight, instead of raging at people not believing her.) Cora may be an awful person, but I find her vastly more interesting and entertaining than any other antagonist on the show.* (Unless we're still counting Regina as an antagonist this season.)

-That said, I'm getting worried that the fan theories about Rumples's being Regina's biological father might pan out? I mean, there were times in season 1 where I pondered and even liked the idea, but not now, when we know more about to what extent he's used, manipulated and emotionally abused Regina (and he seems to have done a number on Cora, too, to help make sure Regina turned into the kind of desperate creature he wanted).

-I find it interesting that no one really seems to realize what Regina was doing with the curse. (Prompted by the Red/Whale scene.) She could have made them all utterly miserable. She could have turned them into farm animals, or made them be constantly in pain, or created some horrible cycle for them to endure over and over (this is part of why August's explanation pissed me off, because as far as he knew, that's what she was doing to them, including to his own father) but she didn't. Instead she made them live her life: never being satisfied, never able to have a happy and fulfilling relationship, separated from the people they loved, always wanting more but never actually knowing WHAT they wanted. Except with Regina, it was insecurities that came from a lifetime of manipulation and abuse. There were times she could have escaped, but didn't, and she made them literally unable to escape. And she THOUGHT she was giving herself everything that she saw herself taking from everyone else, but because of who she is, she controlled through fear and intimidation, instead of getting what she really wanted, which was love and respect (which, I think, is why she wanted Henry to start with, because she believed it was the only chance she'd have to be loved). Not, of course, that this makes her actions any less wrong or evil, because she literally stole people's lives from them (and not touching on anything else she's done), but it's why her redemption plotline works, because it's about her REALIZING that love and respect (and trust and forgiveness) are things that you have to earn, and trying to do so. (Whereas most redemption plots fail because they end up being all about the male woobie being "saved" by the love of a woman he typically treats horribly and who goes through a ton of crap for him and ends up with the short end of the stick.) But my point before tangenting was that Regina didn't want to PUNISH or even necessarily hurt with the curse, she wanted to WIN, and to know she won and revel in it forever, even if she hadn't, really. (The punishing and hurting were just nice bonuses for her.)

*Don't get me wrong, I find Cora exactly as sympathetic as I find Rumples. Which is to say, not at all. But so far, Cora's villainy has been portrayed exactly as that, and the POV of her actions has been that of her victims, and how it affects them/endangers people. In contrast, Rumples's villainy is portrayed as OMG FASCINATING AND COMPLEX, and the emphasis on his actions, and things that happen around him, is rarely about the people they happen to, but on how it makes him OMG LAYERED and his PAIN and on how it affects HIM and makes him more sympathetic, even though the other people are, IMO, consistently more sympathetic, and usually more interesting to me, and so, while he can sometimes be amusing or have interesting moments, there's pretty much no chance of my ever caring about his plot at this point, beyond wanting better for Belle. (He's basically a waywaywaywayway less disgusting Damon Salvatore character to me, narratively, and played by someone who's acting ability exceeds bugging out his eyes and sneering.)

White Collar 3.11-3.13:

I forgot just how much I don't care about Neal's daddy angst until it was back on my screen. But the conspiracy plot is more fun now that Sam/Frank has been sent away, even if I can't help but compare it to Castle's conspiracy plot. (TEchnically, I'm not sure they have much in common beyond a group of crooked cops with at least one member now in a powerful position, but they FEEL very familiar, in what little we have so far.) I did also enjoy the flashbacks, if mostly for Ellen.

Mozzie going off on missions with FBI agents is always good. I'm glad they're finally managing to have both Jones and Diana doing things at the same time. (Or, you know, bothering to do anything with Jones.)

I have no idea how fandom reacted to it, but I was glad when Elizabeth made Neal cut Peter out. I've expected her to a few times before, but she didn't.

Diahann Carroll sang! I mean, she sang a bit in one episode before, but nothing like that.

Did I spot Sara (and her increasingly lighter hair) in the preview? I hope so. (That episode looks like great fun.)

Still catching up on:

Beauty and the Beast
Lost Girl
Nikita
Person of Interest
Scandal

Comments

[lea_hazel]

Your analysis of Regina is fantastic.

[actiaslunaris]

Most of the shipping for Elementary seems to be happening on Tumblr. It also seems to be skewed more to fanart than fanfiction, which makes sense for the platform. ingridmatthews and illjaiyourho are two shippers that come to mind.

[meganbmoore]

Ah, that explains it. I haven't been around tumblr much lately (it pretty much depends on how well I'm doing at keeping up with things, and I'm not doing that well lately) but I actually quit checking the Elementary tag much anyway a while back because people were talking about Sherlock in most posts, and I don't care about that show.