Of Swords and Parasols

Covert Affairs3.15-3.16:

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Haven 3.9: I actually could have gone for this one lasting a few episodes.( spoilers )

Once Upon A Time 2.7: This was pretty good despite some terrible dialogue, and apparently combining two episodes into one. I mean, Once doesn't exactly have the best dialogue ever, but it's usually better than this.

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Person of Interest 2.7: Apparently on tumblr, there's some sort of wank between PoI and Sherlock fans because PoI fans were referring to Finch as "their hedgehog" and Sherlock fans took offense. I have no idea what the significance is, but it certainly created some imagery when watching the episode.

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Revenge: I'm current, but forget what the actual episode numbers involved are. This season is doing plot things that I don't really care about (Pretty much most plot things not directly related to Emily) and so I'm having trouble paying attention to some of it, particularly given how irritating I find the narrative's attitude towards Amanda and Ashley to be this season. Really, I don't know. I liked the first couple of episodes of the season a lot because of the Emily/Charlotte/Victoria focus but the episodes since have left me cold despite my affection for some of the characters. I'm starting to wonder if it's one of those series that has a excellent first season but only really had about a season's worth of truly maintainable plot. (TBH, there seemed to be a fair bit of that going around last fall.) And, unfortunately, it's having the same problem as Once Upon A Time, which is an overabundance of (typically scruffy) white dudes in roughly the 30-40 range being shoehorned in and taking attention away from the more interesting characters and storylines. (Revenge, at least, was nice enough to cast J. R. Bourne and Michael Trucco as two of theirs, so at least there's some actor affection going there, but their characters pretty much exist to give a couple white guys things to do outside their relationships with women, so...) This is made even more annoying by the fact that right now, Revenge is probably doing the worst of the shows I'm watching in terms of female character relationships and how the women treat other women. Only Charlotte, apparently, is allowed to have anything positive in her relationships with other women, and even then they're all lyin to or manipulating her, and while Emily can somehow find sympathy for all the men in her life, she seems to have nothing but contempt and disdain for other women, particularly Amanda.

Revolution 1.8:

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And because I didn't get around to posting on last week's TV until after this week's Revolution aired:

Revolution 1.9: Not exactly filler as it was mostly character development (apparently largely designed to cater to shippers) But the only real plot momentum was with Rachel. My thoughts on Rachel are that I am very happy that this TV season and this show in particular is providing me with plenty of mothers who are morally ambiguous if not outright shady and have things going on besides thier kids while still being written as sympathetic and loving their kids.

Scandal 2.6: Have we actually had two whole episodes and no Fitz? Is it early Christmas?
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The latest Arrow and Beauty and the Beast were good but felt like filler with a few important bits thrown in. Elementary was interesting on the Watson front but the Mystery Of The Week was brought down by a trope whose execution I didn't care for with Gregson's old partner.

I've pretty much finished Rich Man Poor Woman and Naniwa Shounen Tanteidan, the two jdramas I started a few months ago and got sidetracked from. "Pretty much" because, the last time I looked, the last episode of Naniwa hadn't been subbed yet. RMPW floundered a lot in the middle but got back on track in thel ast two episodes and had a pretty strong ending. Naniwa was pretty hit-and-miss in terms of the cases, but the characters and character interactions were great. I also finished season 4 of Fringe, which had a lot of interesting ideas going on but seemed determined to strip Olivia of agency in as many ways as possible. Like with AltLiv's storyline in the second half of season 3, I keep wanting to write up a rant but dissolve into inarticulate raging before I even get started. Then there's season 4 of Parks and Rec, which was largely very fun (as expected) but while I like Leslie/Ben and Leslie running for office, I dislike how it seemed to isolate them from the rest of the cast for large chunks of the season, and I'm unable to comment on Ann/Tom.

77 x Continuum (eps 1.1-1.3)
56 x Naniwa Shounen Tanteidan (eps 1-4)


  

icons @ my LJ

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.

( spoilers )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.