meganbmoore: (nikita: arms)
 90 x Nikita (mid-season 2)
46 x White Collar (mid-season 3)

wc4 24 nikita6 58 nikita6 89

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TeeVee

Apr. 2nd, 2013 11:56 pm
meganbmoore: (white collar: sara/neal: scamming)
Just scratching the surface of what I'm behind on, but progress is progress?

Elementary 1.18:

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Once Upon A Time 2.15-2.16: I liked the episode about Snow's mother about as much as I expected to (A LOT). I liked Cora's backstory less than expectedm due to the fact that, as much as I like Cora's ruthlessness and ambition, that was the biggest "missing the point of your source material" yet of the series. The fact that I can consistently care less about Rumples and now Neal every episode is approaching the miraculous.

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Very much looking forward to what they do with Snow and Regina next. I know I'm still a couple episodes behind, but I'm not particularly interested in what I understand to be the main plots of the next 2 episodes. ("The Stranger," and August. Part of me is still recovering from the abject boredom and pointlessness of the Whale episode a while back.)

Person of Interest 2.17-2.18: I have no deep thoughts, but I hope the HR plotline is wrapped up by the end of this season.

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White Collar 4.14-4.16:  Hilarie Burton really does the Audrey Hepburn look well, doesn't she?  (Still not thrilled with how her hair keeps getting lighter and lighter.  Though I think she was usually blonde before WC?  And yes, when people change their hair in my shows', I obsess over it.)

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The trailer for Graceland that was at the end of the WC finale looked quite dull.

I've also been catching up with Pretty Little Liars.  You may recall that I was very in love with it a while back, and then suddenly stopped talking about it.  That's because it was group watching, and we all got sidetracked.  But I'm about 1/4 of the way through season 3 now, and loving it.  But wow, what is it with Melissa and pedophiles?  Like EVERY SINGLE GUY she's been interested in has chased after at least one teenaged girl way too young for him, and some more than one.  Is the woman just a pedophile magnet, or something?  I'm actually very fond of Melissa, but her taste in men is just horrific.  (Oddly, while I don't care for Ezra and find Aria/Ezra icky in general, not to mention boring, it's also very much a "wrong because of their ages" thing?  Like, I don't get the same pedophile vibe from him that I do from Ian, Wren or Garrett, and actually get why they're compatible?  It's just the NO STOP DATING YOUR STUDENT DUDE, GEEZ part.  I suppose it helps that Aria was the pursuer there and Ezra spends half his time apparently inwardly berating himself, BUT WHY MUST THE PLOTLINE EXIST?)
meganbmoore: (once: apple?)

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.)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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White Collar 3.11-3.13:
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Still catching up on:

Beauty and the Beast
Lost Girl
Nikita
Person of Interest
Scandal

meganbmoore: (bomb girls)

127 x White Collar (season 2)

white collar2 122 white collar2 97 white collar2 39 

icons @ my LJ

TeeVee

Sep. 23rd, 2012 03:30 pm
meganbmoore: (pillars: empress + swords)

The Bletchley Circle: Like "a series about women who made bombs in WW2" and "midwives who work out of a convent in 1950s London," "a quartet of female Bletchley Park codebreakers reunite in 1952 to catch a serial killer" isn't a series I would have believed would actually be made a year ago. And yet, they all came to be in 2012. None in my own country, but still. So, Bletchley Circle. A 3 part miniseries that just aired in Britain, is about Susan, Millie, Lucy and Jean, 4 women who worked in Bletchley Park during WW2, who are reunited in 1952 when Susan, now a housewife, pieces together parts of a serial killer's pattern from a radio broadcast. Some parts reminded me a bit much of why I don't watch many procedurals (various trigger warnings regarding dead bodies, violence against women and disturbing imagery apply, though I wouldn't say that there was anything gratuitous or, except one scene in the second episode, could have really been left out) and I thought parts of the climax happened more for drama than for logic or plot consistency (it's in keeping with Susan's character in one way, but not in another) but I enjoyed it and would not remotely object to a sequel. (Also, it has Anna Maxwell Martin and Rachael Sterling as the main character and nominal second lead character, and so I kept expecting canon lesbianism, which didn't happen. But it was nicely unapologetic about completely failing to pass the Reverse Bechdel Test.)

Covert Affairs 3.7-3.10: Despite this season being rather hit-and-miss with me so far (I still haven't forgiven them for that thing they kicked the season off with, and there was that boring Auggie stuff for a while) I mostly liked these episodes a lot.

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White Collar
4.7-4.10: I will be very surprised if episode 7 isn't my favorite episode this season. And I never pegged White Collar as a show likely to have an "ovaries before brovaries" scene, and yet it did. Not necessarily surprised that it did, though.

Expandspoilers )World Without End 1-3 (of ?): Nominal sequel to Pillars of the Earth in that it's set in the same fictional town 100 years later. And also, has an abusive husband named Alfred Builder as a supporting character. It's somewhat mixed and while I can't speak for the book, it actually seems to be relying a lot on similar plotlines. There are more women front-and-center than in PotE, but they're also on the receiving end more violence. Most of it is realistic enough as far as that goes (but we're dealing with fictional characters in a fictional town and aren't exactly closely adhering to history here anyway...) but most of it just makes me go "Was that really necessary now?" Though the villains in general aren't quite as over-the-top as in PotE. The romances are pretty decent so far (and neither of the guys in the 2 main romances have abandoned a baby to die in the woods-mindchanging or no-or make me wonder if he's a stalker) and I highly approve of the inclusion of the nuns, but things don't seem to tie together as well as they could. I like large chunks of it and dislike others (creepy monk [and icky plot stuff surrounding him] and Alfred need to diiiiiiiieeeeeeee. Though I was thinking I might like Alfred for a while there.) and will keep watching because I like Gwenda and Carris and the Mother Superior and enjoy Petronella's Eeeevil (mostly) and Isabella's ambition. (Also, Isabella's actress bears such a striking resemblance to Claudia Black that I forgot it wasn't her a couple times, depending on the lighting.) I also suspect it's something I"ll like more once I've seen the whole thing than on an episode-by-episode basis.

Haven and Downton Abbey are both back, but I haven't watched them yet, and I'm very behind on Sinbad without meaning to be (I think I'm grumpy about something in the last episode I watched). I think the season finale of that actually airs tonight. In non-currently-airing TV news, I waatched the pilot for Justified and kinda want that hour of my life back. I was going to watch more just in case, since pilots are often weaker than subsequent episodes and handle various things differently than the pilot would make you think, but then the main character broke into his ex-wife's house in the middle of the night so he could make a man Pain-y speech in which he ponders whether or not he colud kill someone in cold blood, and I decided my time would be better spent elsewhere. I also watched Hogfather, which was apparently in my Netflix queue because it has Michelle Dockery, since I haven't read the book yet, and it was grand fun, and I enjoy how the plot can almost be boiled down to "DiscworldEquivalent!Santa gets kidnapped! Death takes over his job and annoys his granddaughter so that she'll save reality! Hijinks!" I also have a thing for Michelle Dockery in general and her voice in particular. I've also almost finished Prime Suspect (UK version) after about 2 years of watching it off and on (Netflix kept having long waits on some discs). Helen Mirren is always most excellent, but while I'm glad I watched it, it's something I more appreciate than like. It's very Serious Business all the time and the revolving cast means there are no relationships of any variety to develop a real investment in, and no character but Jane to get attached to.

And I've been rewatching Poirot the last couple weeks, and between that and all the above, it rather feels like there's been an endless stream of dead bodies on my sceen lately.

TeeVee

Aug. 26th, 2012 10:41 pm
meganbmoore: (covert affairs: gimme tv)

Continuum 1.10: Pretty good finale, lots of reveals and twists, but largely ones most of us guessed. I largely liked them? The most interesting stuff in the episode was probably Sonya's stuff. Between the developments and the improved wardrobe, hopefully Lexa Doig will have a larger role next season. Which has been confirmed for 13 episodes, so YAY.

Covert Affairs 3.5-3.6: I think these were probably my favorite episodes so far this season, because they focused on the parto f the show that's one of the main draws for me: that Annie isn't a good spy because she can fight or does dangerous things, but because she has good instincts and is good at reading people and finding the right kind of communication for individuals. I don't have any deep thoughts, though I'm glad we have a woman of color around now (no idea how long she'll be there) and am always happy when Oded Fehr shows up (which I wish would be more often).

Political Animals 1.4-1.6: Uhm...given the ending and the fact that the finale's recap referred to "the season" as opposed to "the series," I am going to assume that a second season is in the works. This series got its fair share of things wrong, but I love it deeply for what it wanted and tried to be.

Expandspoilers )OK USA, if nothing else, you should renew just because Ciaran Hinds clearly adores hamming it up here. And, you know, for a lot of other reasons too. I need AU!Hillary Clinton/Murphy Brown dramatized fanfic in my life!

Sinbad 1.5-1.7: Did anyone else spend most of ep 7 thinking it was the season finale, and then...it wasn't?

Expandspoilers )(And there's a new episode tonight, but I forgot to post this esrlier this week when I watched everything.)

White Collar 4.5-4.6:

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I also watched season 4 of Leverage. Surrising no one, my favorite epiosde was The Girls Night Out Job, but it was pretty closely followed by the episode with Sterling (because Evil Nate is always fun, and I'm a sucker for his motivations in that one) and the season finale, for the guest stars (Though I wish there had been more girls. But I guess Tara was probably out because she might be known as one of their associates, and The Italian probably isn't quite trusted enough. Or at all. And there's the muscle lady from Chaos's old team, but that would be doubling up and I think Chaos is actually the only one who could fill that particular slot. I can still be sad, though.)

Meanwhile, over in doramaland, I watched episode 3 of Arang and the Magistrate today. This one had a lot of angst, and while technically it was good angst, I think there might have been too abrupt a transition between the humor and the angstfest? Still a pretty fun episode.

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TeeVee

Aug. 4th, 2012 02:50 pm
meganbmoore: (covert affairs: gimme tv)

Continuum 1.9: This show has now thoroughly confused me by actually being pretty good instead of just fun for two episodes in a row.

Expandspoilers )Covert Affairs 3.4:

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Political Animals 1.3: Why can't this show be ongoing instead of a miniseries? I want to keep it in my life a bit longer.

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Sinbad 1.4:

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White Collar 4.4:

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I'm also watching 2 airing jdramas that I keep meaning to post on but forgetting to. Naniwa Shounen Tanteidan is a comedy/mystery series about a 6th grade teacher who solvs crimes with the aid of 4 of her students and, sometimes, 2 police officers (one of whom inevitably has a crush on her, and is essentially a human teddy bear) who might be the only jdrama police officers allowed to be good cops without the series actuslly being about police officers. It's adorably and giddy and fluffy depsite having a plot that repeatedly exposes 12 year olds to dangerous criminals, dead bodies, and random other trauma. (Admittedly, most of it ends up not being as bad as initially believed.) It's delightful to watch but doesn't look to really do anything revolutionary. Rich Man Poor Woman, OTOH, is utterly addictive and reminds me of a lot of the jdramas from around the late 90s-2005, which I watched at about the rate of a drama a week for months when I started watched doramas in I think early 2006 (it was shortly after the first Hana Yori Dango and before the second was announced.) RMPW is half romantic comedy and half office drama, about Hyuga Tohru, an eccentric and abrassive near-genius who runs and IT firm and has a medical condition that prevents him from remembering most nams a faces, and Sawaki Chihiro, a college student with near-perfect memorization skills who has difficulty with social andp rofessional situations. She also happens to share a name with Hyuga's mother. There's lots of Drama and Shock Reveals that alternately make you go "...what...?" and "THIS DRAMA!" and they regularly consult shoujo manga (there's literally a scene where Sawaki is drunk and sees Hyuga in a cloud of sparkles) and I'm pretty sire they polled Oguri Shun fans to see what they wanted him to do if he was ever the lead in a romance drama. There's also a female romantic rival who seems to think "romantic rival" means "future BFF who thinks you're absolutely adorable" based on their interactions so far. It's utterly addictive. I should warn, though, that whoever does the women's hair in this should never be allowed near hair again. There are times when I think they're actively trying to make very attractive women look plain by bad hair alone.

NST has 5 episodes out, but only 4 have subs, and RMPW has 4 episodes currently out, all with subs.

TeeVee

Jul. 26th, 2012 10:36 pm
meganbmoore: (covert affairs: gimme tv)

Continuum 1.8:

Expandspoilers )Political Animals 1.2: I didn't like this as much as the pilot for one specific reason, but I still liked it a lot.

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Sinbad 1.3:

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White Collar and Covert Affairs were both entertaining this week but didn't inspire much in the way of deep thinking. White Collar might actually manage to have a metaplot for the season that works for once, and Covert Affairs was better than other Auggie-centric eps have been. (Which is to say, my eyes didn't glaze over with boredom and wait for the next scene with Annie and/or Joan, as has been the case with previous Auggie-centric episodes.) That said, I think I have to unfollow the official twitter feed for CA because its mildly annoying in general but about 80% of the time it's more like an obnoxious Auggie fanclub that is making me actively dislike Auggie.

TeeVee

Jul. 21st, 2012 07:31 pm
meganbmoore: (maeve + rumina)
Continuum 1.5-1.7: This show is really kind of not good at all, but whatever, I love it despite it's tendenc to be kinda of faily at anything but women with agency shooting things.

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Covert Affairs 3.1-3.2:

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The Hollow Crown: BBC miniseries (clocking in at around hours total) adapting Shakespeare's Richard II, Henry IV and Henry V. I've read plays but recall little about them, so I can't really comment on how faithful they are or aren't. It took me about 40 minutes in part 1 to stop just going "oooooooooooooo" over the costumes and settings, and I think I mostly enjoyed it (well, the first 3 parts, I haven't watched Henry V yet as it just aired in the UK todays) for the performances and visuals. I'd be interested in seeing what others those more familiar with the plays think. I think there will be more adaptations of Shakespeare plays airing on BBC 2 over the next couple months, but am not certain which.

Also, I first saw Michelle Dockery and Tom Hiddleston in Return to Cranford (and mostly associate him with that, despite being prone to refer to him as "Loki," though I associate Dockery more with Downton Abbey) where they were basically BFF who grew up like siblings and she got her jollies through trolling him and was trying to marry him off to Jodie Whittaker, so their being enemies here was just odd.

Political Animals 1.1: (I think this is actually a miniseries, but we can hold out hope for it being popular enough to get a sequel.) PA is basically an AU version of Hilary Clinton that may have actually started life as a Hillary Clinton/Murphy Brown fanfic. Sigourney Weaver stars as Elaine Barrish, the secretary of state (working for the president she lsot to in the primaries)and ex-wife of a former philandering president, and Carla Gugino stars as Susan Berg, a journalist who has been critical of Elaine in the past (to the point where she got banned from the White House for several years) but who has developed a certain appreciation for Elaine and is suppressing a scandal of the parrish family's in exchange for an exclusive week with Elaine. There are a bunch of other charcters floating around (Perhaps most notably Ciaran Hinds as Elaine's ex-husband and Ellen Burstyn as her mother, who appears to have a very adventurous sexual past. Sebastian Stan is also hanging around as one of Elaine's sons. I know he's popular in these parts.) but the main focus in the pilot was on Elaine and Susan's professional lives and balancing them with personal drama. It's a bit soapy but not detrimentally so, and it's amusingly devoted to making sure we realize that it intends to be a feminist show. Not that it isn't, but I kind of wanted to pat the writers on the head every time Elaine or Susan had a "we will now call society on it's sexism and/or double standards now" oneliner. (I mean, it actually does this well, but fairly obviously.) I have a few issues with the portrayal of homosexuality (or rather, with the plotline they seem to be going with with the one canon gay character, realistic as it may be) and how the POC characters seem to be heading (and I wonder if Adrian Pasdar being of Iranian descent had any affect on one plotline), but both of those could end up being done well by the end of the season.

Sinbad 1.1-1.2: A very fun show in which a Sinbad adaptation actually has a cast with more POC than not. (Kind of sad that the latter part is surprising.) In this version, 20-ish Sinbad messes up on an amazing enough level that not only is the Emir's brother (Sayid from Lost) sending every soldier in the country looking for him, but his own grandmother curses him so that a golden collar will strangle him if he spends more than a day and night on land (though, it seems you could get around some of that if you could manage to keep a small boat anchored just off shore...). But basically, you know you messed up if your granny who clearly loves you very much puts a deadly curse on you. (His granny is kinda really badass.) There are a lot mor female characters than I was expecting. Granny, of course, but also a fabulous evil sorceress, a thief, an African lady with A Mysterious Secret, possibly Sinbad's mother, a pirate cannibal queen with the potential to be a recurring character, and i think I've spotted what looks to be a female hunter in a promotional image or two. Sinbad's crew also includes an amusingly (for now, I can see it getting old) naive doctor, a drill sergeant for a cook, andthe show's token white dude, who has the potential to be fairly interesting. It's hard not to compare it to the 90s show (Which it clearly does better than in some areas, but also lacks the giddy cheese and crack of the 90s show. And, well, this Sinbad just isn't as blithely coky. Though he is a very pretty boy, and well cast.) but it's exceptionally fun and I hope it remains so.

White Collar 4.1-4.2: Oh look, after being in every episode for 3 seasons, Jones finally got moved from the guest stars list to the regulars list.

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meganbmoore: (mists: morgaine)

Rarewomen is live!

I wrote The Benefits of Conmen (as you can see, titles are not my strong suit) a Cindy-centric White Collar fic forzvi.

And I received an excellent Ygraine centric Arthuriana fic (Mallory based),  The Monstrous Crying of Wind.  (Clearly,  my gifter is better at titles than me.)
meganbmoore: (white collar: (some of) the ladies)
116 x Lost Girl (season 1)
117 x White Collar (season 1)




icons @ my LJ

TeeVee

Mar. 3rd, 2012 03:37 pm
meganbmoore: (white collar: (some of) the ladies)
Lost Girl 2.17: 
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Once Upon A Time
1.13: Well, that was more fun than I've had with this show since ep 6.

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Pan Am
1.13-1.14: You know while episode 13 cleared up some things, I think I get why it didn't originally air in the middle of the season. I like to think that someone high up there got a look at the resolution of the Ginny plot and went "no, we are not doing that."(Though, just dropping it all together isn't exactly an improvement.)  I am glad we got a bit more of Lanzo though.

On to the actual season finale.

Expandspoilers )Revenge 1.16:

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Ringer
1.14-1.15:

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White Collar
3.15-3.16:

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meganbmoore: (white collar: (some of) the ladies)
The comments in this TVLine article about White Collar amuse me.  Mostly because I wonder if there'd be so much complaining about the show giving a lot of attention to the supporting cast if the supporting and recurring cast contained any conventionally attractive white dudes.

TeeVee

Feb. 18th, 2012 02:58 pm
meganbmoore: (white collar: (some of) the ladies)

Bomb Girls: Season 1: Bomb Girls is a Canadian series about women who work in a munitions factory in WW2. Despite some developments I'm not sure about in the last episode (I guess they had to create some future Drama for the second season?), it is fairly awesome? If you like "what life was like in this time and place" period dramas, this is a pretty good one, and it feels a lot like some of the good BBC and ITV period dramas, in terms of story and characterization, if not production quality. (Which reminds me that I haven't watched Land Girls yet.) I suspect a lot of the actresses are inexperienced, but they still did a good job. It's kind of irritatingly white in many ways, with a couple exceptions, and the plotline with the lesbian character plays out a bit painfully, if realistically (but with plenty of hope for the future) and I don't know what I think of the romantic plotlines (I want to like them but am a bit iffy, though Gladys's fiance is winning me over against my will) but I like almost all the characters and don't think there are any I actually dislike, and it passes the Bechdel test in about 6 out of 7 scenes, and I think there are maybe 10 minutes of the series without one woman or another around. Warning for a rather gruesome (though less graphic than many shows would make it) factory accident in the first episode, that gets flashed back to in the last.

Lost Girl 2.14-2.16:

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Nikita 2.10-2.15: 2.14 and 2.15 are a good example of why it's sometimes good to be the sort of person who tends to hoard TV until you have a few more episodes to watch together. You don't have to wait for the resolution to a cliffhanger that way.

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Once Upon A Time 1.8-1.12: Emma, stop having chemistry with your bio!mom. Even if she is magically enchanted to remain your age forever and you aren't convinced she's your mother. Anyway, it's a tad awkward.

Most of fandom seems to think this show is getting better and better, but I'm having the opposite reaction? Despite problems, I really loved the first 4 episodes but since then, it...hasn't been the show I thought it was going to be? It's still fun and I largely enjoy the plot twists that don't involve cheating, rape, or portraying slavery/imprisonment as romantic, but it's not the show I wanted and the narrative's approach blocks my investment, particularly when it's going out of its way to woobify Rumples (who I enjoy as a villain, but am increasingly losing interest in the more they make me want to forget his treatment and manipulation of women and just feel BAD for him and his PAIN-I'm starting to make narrative connections between him and TV!Damon Salvatore, and that's a very bad path for me, even if Rumples entertains me way more than Damon ever did, actually has redeeming value for me as a character, and, uhm, Robert Carlyle actually possesses the ability to act) and increasingly make Regina more and more one-note evil (FUN one-note evil, but still one-note).

TBH, right now I mostly pay attention to the Emma, Ruby/Red and Snow White/Mary Margaret stuff (I'm apparently in the minority that didn't care for the Beauty & the Beast part of the latest episode but love the Galentines day subplot), and the Snow White retelling parts.

Pan Am 1.9-1.12: Show, please don't be cancelled! If anyone had told me at the start of the fall season that Pan Am and Revenge were going to be my favorite new shows (I was expecting it to be Secret Circle and Once Upon Time) I wouldn't have believed you because I initially only checked Revenge out because of the concept and Pan Am because it was a period drama with a predominantly female cast.

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Show! Get renewed!

Revenge 1.14-1.15: Emanda x White Gloves = OTP? Seriously, wardrobe was on a roll in ep 14.

Expandspoilers )Ringer 1.11-1.13:

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Sense and Sensibility (2008): I can't quite remember what the feedback on this one was, but aside from the opening bit (which I can see the logic of, but I don't think it should have been the very first thing in the series) and the soundtrack (were those electric guitars I heard?) I liked it. I think liking but not being overly attached to the book helps me not care as much about the changes. I really liked the cast, especially the Dashwood women, and Dan Stevens tried really hard to get me to like Edward Ferrars, but didn't succeed. (That said, on a shallow note, the longish dark hair is much better for him than the short light hair he has in Downton Abbey.)

White Collar 2.11-2.14:

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meganbmoore: (white collar: (some of) the ladies)

Episode numbers are blending together because I'm catching up with both shows right now, but did White Collar and Covert Affairs have plot-of-the-week episodes with a focus on microdots on the same week?

Also, White Collar, it's about time you had a Jones-centric episode.
 

(Does anyone else have a strong desire for USA to do a Covert Affairs/White Collar crossover?  I just want Annie and Neal to have to go on a mission together for some reason and bicker the whole time.  Neal will love her but Annie will hhhaaaaaaaatttttteeeeeee him.  They actually did a photoshoot or something a while back, I think.)

meganbmoore: (mm: tie)


 

ExpandSpoilers realize that they are behind and that there will be a new episode by the time they blink. )


P.S.-Dear show, so far, you have done an excellent job of not killing characters off in the name of Drama.  I mean, aside from the fridging that everyone thinks is fake.  Please do not change this.

meganbmoore: (vd: feathers)
I held off on White Collar episodes for a bit after hearing about the ep supposedly everyone hated so that I’d have good episodes to follow it up with. The episode was as bad as reported. The main plot mostly made me want Covert Affairs back already, because it does that kind of plot with way, way less fail. (Which is not to say Covert Affairs is perfect in that regard, but it’s at least somewhat aware of the RaceFail that often comes into play with Hollywood and foreign governments and spy plots and manages to avoid the worst of it, whereas White Collar just kinda…blindly bulldozed into it.) Then there was Neal’s character development bit. Let us pray that bit never surfaces again. But the two episodes after that were quite good, and had some adorable June and Neal and Elizabeth and Mozz bits, and had parts that played into my “Whee!” tropes. Like remote puzzle solving and dancing and publicly hidden treasures and stuff. Though, didn’t they just make Hilarie Burton a regular? Seems odd that we haven’t seen Sara since Burke’s Seven, though that status may be for season 3.

Then there’s Vampire Diaries which wasn’t as good as most of the last 2 episodes (basically, most but for the parts where Damon is the walking embodiment of Rape Culture Is Sexy And Tortured) but way better than The Descent, which, aside from the parts with Jules, Elena, Rose, Tyler and Caroline (which make up less of the episode than that list would imply) is by far my least favorite episode.

Expandspoilers )Five weeks until a new episode!  Well, I need a detox from certain parts anyway.
meganbmoore: (mm: tie)
White Collar, is, in essence, a buddy cop show about Neal Caffery, a career thief and conartist who becomes and FBI consultant under the care of Peter Burke, the FBI agent who arrested Neal after hunting for him for several years, and arrests Neal again when he breaks out of prison a few months before his release to look for Kate, Neal’s girlfriend of the better part of a decade, who Neal is convinced broke up with him because she’s in danger.

The show is bright and fluffy and frequently funny, with spurts of “Look! Angst!,” and pretends to be a procedural, but is really a lighthearted caper show that thinks it needs a serious metaplot to keep it going (It doesn’t, which the writers seem to realize at some point and just embrace the cheese and become all “Zomg! Conspiracy theories!”). It’s pretty much brain candy, but there’s nothing wrong with brain candy. Also, I like Neal, despite not typically caring for the “supercharming conartist” type. A lot of it, I suspect, is that, unlike most of the type, he isn’t a womanizer (I understand Matt Bomer wants him to be, and that makes me sad) and even his flirting with anything that moves seems to be more a fascination with his effect on people than any actual interest most of the time, and instead of the smug “I’m cleverer than you” attitude, he’s more disconnected from everything with an almost childlike fascination that he snaps out of when presented with An Adventure, or anything involving Kate. Being fond of Matt Bomer from Chuck also helps.

It’s definitely a “straight white guys” show but…possibly the most inoffensive version possible? These shows tend to come in two main varieties: There’re the ones that are about straight white guys because everything else is about straight white guys and it doesn’t occur to them to be any different, even when they clearly love the other characters, and then there’re the ones that are about straight white guys because straight white guys are the most awesome thing ever and no one else is as cool, and other characters are there to further them. White Collar, thankfully, is the former, which is not to say that it doesn’t have it’s share of problems.

The first season, frankly, doesn’t seem to have a clue about what to do with anyone but Neal and Peter. With one exception, this shows mostly blatantly with Natalie Morales’s character. She seems to have been cast for her ability to outzing Bomer (she can outzing anyone) but after the first couple episodes, they didn’t even have her do that. I suspect she was initially brought in as a potential love interest only to quickly decide not to do that, and so instead they…did nothing with her. Now, I think that the proper response to that is to find something else to do with her, but I can understand the decision not to bring her back for the second season. (That it makes sense for the show itself does not alter the fact that the way they went about it was appalling and unprofessional.)

The main problem, though, is Kate. Not Kate as a character, but that’s actually kind of the problem. See, I kind of…have a very deep need to be invested in Kate and suspect that, if given the chance, I would love her forever and ever. However, despite being a big part of the metaplot (actually, she basically is the metaplot) and Neal’s major motivation (can you say “ubermonomaniacal obsession, but in a most endearing and even sweet way?”) she’s had about 5 minutes screen time, total, and that’s including when we only have her voice at the other end of the phone line. Not only that, but we also know very little about her as a person. We know Neal is obsessively devoted to her, that his friend, Mozzie, likes and trusts her, despite trusting few people, and that Peter doesn’t trust her. We know she likes “the classics” when it comes to crime and plotting, but we don’t really know much of anything about her personality. We know that she is-willingly or unwillingly-involved in an elaborate scheme that involves Neal, but we’ve had absolutely nothing of her own perspective in that, including whether she’s betraying or trying to protect Neal. I mean, I think she’s protecting him, but that’s more a combination of personal preference I mean, how many stories do we get where men deceive women and try to shield them from the worst of the badness “for their own good”?) and not thinking the show would do something that devastating to Neal (sometimes, I think about 90% of his functioning largely as a “normal”-albeit criminal-member of society rests in his absolute belief that Kate is the epic love of his life and that she’s as devoted to him as he is to her) than anything remotely concrete that the show has given me to go on.

That said, season 2, IMO, does a much better job all around than season 1 in terms of having a clue what to do with anyone other than Neal and Peter, though it’s still far from perfect. (Also, given that they’re almost always filming Tiffani Thiessen from the shoulders up and she wears loose clothes when they show more of her, I’m guessing that she’s pregnant, and that’s why we’ve had less of Elizabeth this season? If not, I may have to retract some of this.) However, there are (though not all at once) seven women of recurring or regular status in the show, all but one of whom seems likely to continue to have an important presence. In addition (and this is of particular importance to me, as other shows often praised for Women Doing Things tend to lose me because of this) most of these women have things going on in their lives beyond the straight white male leads. They have careers, which they are shown to be competent in, and if they aren’t directly involved in Peter and Neal’s cases, they’re doing their own things when/if they get pulled in. They aren’t (and probably never will be) the main focus (and, though enjoyable, the show will never be a huge favorite of mine and I won’t be parading it around as “Doing It Right) but, IMO, they’re largely treated with more respect than many other shows. 

I am supposed to have two videos here, but DW refuses to embed them, so you can go to LJ to see them.

Note: I also think the fridging is a fakeout.

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meganbmoore

July 2020

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