Fringe is baaaaaaaack
Sep. 29th, 2012 02:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
opusculasedferaI am infinitely delighted that Fringe is back! Still a little dubious about this plotline though. It's not that it's bad necessarily, it's just that it feels like reading a really good fic rather than canon. Because it wasn't really built up at all (though I have seen some speculation that there will turn out to have been more hints in the previous four seasons than we realised and I'd like to believe that the writers are still that good at planning) it doesn't feel like the "real" plot, in pretty much the same way that even really good fic is never tense in precisely the same way as canon can be, where I'm not only concerned about what will happen, but worried because this is the one way that these things can occur so it had better work out.
Not that it was a bad episode. Oh, Walter. It was painful to watch, but from a technical standpoint, THAT is how you do a non-graphic torture scene! Less sure about the familial relationships. Peter and Olivia were so very tell-not-show by the end of S4 that suddenly catching up on three/four years of development through a single conversation seems particularly lacking, but I'm hoping they will flesh that out a little more and we'll get more of their uneasiness together. Etta is fine, I'm just not really attached to her yet. Kind of glad we've skipped ahead to her and Olivia's awkward adult relationship because I'm not quite convinced that the writers could have written Olivia and her own child in a non-saccharine way, despite doing an excellent job with her niece in S1. I do like that Etta clearly has cherished the memory of her parents, but is totally willing to admit that the memory isn't super clear and has a lot to do with their rep as rebels against the Observer regime.
The plot is also still proving itself to me, but I am interested in where it goes. Not that I have any idea what might happen anymore. I really hope they spend some time on the existing resistance and don't just make Olivia and co. the almighty saviours of everything without any help. I think they need to, frankly, especially as Etta's Fringe job is completely blown now. I did like that the guy in the resistance who was dubious about giving our Fringe team the play-dead tech didn't turn out to be evil because it is a totally reasonable point that the life of one man is not worth possibly blowing the whole resistance, even if they love him a whole lot, but it's not like the team was super acknowledging of his good point so I'm still reserving judgement until I see how the show decides to treat the rest of the resistance.
Also, I would like to know why the Observers suddenly care desperately about air-quality when they were fine in our world before.
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I also finally got around to watching the Elementary pilot! I enjoyed it a fair bit, though it's funny how it's actually much harder to watch something that acknowledges that the protagonist is being a dick because then you have to actually deal with the real emotional fallout. On the upside, the rest of it is likely to be better because they are making the point that douchey behaviour isn't actually a marker of genius and temper tantrums aren't elaborate plans that help you solve things.
I do like Joan Watson, even though I spend a lot of time getting lost in the incandescent beauty of her face. If she has to be his sober companion, I do like that it isn't just genius-wrangling under another name, she is genuinely working the different angle of making sure he isn't doing drugs and has her own plans in place for that.* And it does provide an explanation for her presence, though I would kind of like to see a version of Sherlock Holmes where one of them is a woman that just starts like the original books where they're already happy roommates, no explanations required.
*My take on the sober companion vs. doctor angle is that it will be fantastic if Elementary treats this job with respect, it is also true that making women POCs explicitly not be doctors is a little sketchy, given everything else about culture. It seems more or less the same to me as the point that nursing is a very important job and should be given a lot of respect, nevertheless, it's a feature of social problems that they're mostly women and those problems should be fixed, which would then probably change those demographics.
The central mystery was acceptable? Excessive violence against women, but we'll see how further episodes do on this front, and they did do a fairly good job of giving us all the details without telling us the answer long before Sherlock had worked it out. And I do like that he gets to be wrong and deduction isn't actually the same as magic and sequential logic isn't actually the same thing as court-acceptable proof. Oh, and isn't it nice to see a mystery/crime show that doesn't depend on magic science? The pyschologist's effectiveness was perhaps dubious, but none of the things worked out from the blood spatter or other physical evidence were particularly magical. Will probably watch the next episode.
Not that it was a bad episode. Oh, Walter. It was painful to watch, but from a technical standpoint, THAT is how you do a non-graphic torture scene! Less sure about the familial relationships. Peter and Olivia were so very tell-not-show by the end of S4 that suddenly catching up on three/four years of development through a single conversation seems particularly lacking, but I'm hoping they will flesh that out a little more and we'll get more of their uneasiness together. Etta is fine, I'm just not really attached to her yet. Kind of glad we've skipped ahead to her and Olivia's awkward adult relationship because I'm not quite convinced that the writers could have written Olivia and her own child in a non-saccharine way, despite doing an excellent job with her niece in S1. I do like that Etta clearly has cherished the memory of her parents, but is totally willing to admit that the memory isn't super clear and has a lot to do with their rep as rebels against the Observer regime.
The plot is also still proving itself to me, but I am interested in where it goes. Not that I have any idea what might happen anymore. I really hope they spend some time on the existing resistance and don't just make Olivia and co. the almighty saviours of everything without any help. I think they need to, frankly, especially as Etta's Fringe job is completely blown now. I did like that the guy in the resistance who was dubious about giving our Fringe team the play-dead tech didn't turn out to be evil because it is a totally reasonable point that the life of one man is not worth possibly blowing the whole resistance, even if they love him a whole lot, but it's not like the team was super acknowledging of his good point so I'm still reserving judgement until I see how the show decides to treat the rest of the resistance.
Also, I would like to know why the Observers suddenly care desperately about air-quality when they were fine in our world before.
-
I also finally got around to watching the Elementary pilot! I enjoyed it a fair bit, though it's funny how it's actually much harder to watch something that acknowledges that the protagonist is being a dick because then you have to actually deal with the real emotional fallout. On the upside, the rest of it is likely to be better because they are making the point that douchey behaviour isn't actually a marker of genius and temper tantrums aren't elaborate plans that help you solve things.
I do like Joan Watson, even though I spend a lot of time getting lost in the incandescent beauty of her face. If she has to be his sober companion, I do like that it isn't just genius-wrangling under another name, she is genuinely working the different angle of making sure he isn't doing drugs and has her own plans in place for that.* And it does provide an explanation for her presence, though I would kind of like to see a version of Sherlock Holmes where one of them is a woman that just starts like the original books where they're already happy roommates, no explanations required.
*My take on the sober companion vs. doctor angle is that it will be fantastic if Elementary treats this job with respect, it is also true that making women POCs explicitly not be doctors is a little sketchy, given everything else about culture. It seems more or less the same to me as the point that nursing is a very important job and should be given a lot of respect, nevertheless, it's a feature of social problems that they're mostly women and those problems should be fixed, which would then probably change those demographics.
The central mystery was acceptable? Excessive violence against women, but we'll see how further episodes do on this front, and they did do a fairly good job of giving us all the details without telling us the answer long before Sherlock had worked it out. And I do like that he gets to be wrong and deduction isn't actually the same as magic and sequential logic isn't actually the same thing as court-acceptable proof. Oh, and isn't it nice to see a mystery/crime show that doesn't depend on magic science? The pyschologist's effectiveness was perhaps dubious, but none of the things worked out from the blood spatter or other physical evidence were particularly magical. Will probably watch the next episode.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-29 08:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-29 08:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-30 08:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-30 08:17 am (UTC)Wish I could trust them, but after Season Four -- no.
I guess characterization and the agency of your female protagonist is not the same as continuity and coherency, though. I could be surprised in the end?
Hah! Good point.
Hmm, I actually quite liked it. I think lovey-dovey P/O is not something I could have taken; I'm still bitter about A Short Story About Love. But this -- ah, this worked for me...not because I want any of them to suffer, not Peter and very obviously not Olivia. But I want their story and feelings to be organically developed, not copy/pasted, if that makes any sense?
US shows and kids: not usually a good take on parents and children and their relationships, in my as ever less than humble opinions. (German tv is not much better, but it's at least not so common a Big Signal of Having Reached Familial Happiness Forever Yay. ;)
The whole Observer storyline is a little baffling to begin with. But then again, I dislike Opressive Regimes on my tv and movie screen quite intensely, for personal and historical reasons, so I'm harsher on this point than others in the past.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-30 01:58 pm (UTC)Agreed, though I keep hoping because I know these writers are capable of something acceptable, when they actually try. And it is true that they seem to care about the conspiracy much more than they care about Olivia as a character, as much as I wish it were otherwise.
I think lovey-dovey P/O is not something I could have taken
Yeah, I didn't want them to fall into each other's arms, particularly if they're going to give them this backstory of unexamined tensions related to the Observer's first arrival, I was just annoyed that all we got was this one conversation after all that other sketched-in characterisation. It made me worry that TPTB were going to take this as the resolution to their problems and avoid going into their relationship much in this season, despite introducing extra complications into it that need a lot more work.
Ugh, agreed, so tired of US sentimentality about kids as magical miracles (or, in the few shows that depict them otherwise, as sticks with which to beat the back of women who aren't behaving sufficiently maternally/femininely/etc., and as part of the depiction of family life as a horrible torment that it is totally unfair that men have to deal with. Bleh.)
The Observers are really not the most compelling part of the storyline here, yeah. Can I be annoyed by both the fact that it's another Oppressive Regime storyline AND the fact that they aren't even depicting the regime particularly well? Because it's not my trope, but if they're going to do it, they could at least try to explain why it's scary other than because the Observers kill people. The whole point of oppressive regimes is that they affect everyone's life in subtle ways, that's how you make us really believe that it's scary! Instead we're getting wildly inconsistent surveillance tech and people running around being rebels like they don't have to be careful, and it doesn't seem like it's supposed to be a point of characterisation.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-30 07:52 pm (UTC)There is that; their plot has been pretty good throughout the course of the show.
Precisely. I echo your URGH.
Amen, girl.
Sometimes I think you're me. That appeals to my inner narcissist, clearly! ♥