making a man and a meal
Apr. 5th, 2019 08:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessMotherFatherSon – episode 5
I thought the dramaturgical issue with this issue was that the flashbacks dissipated the tension of the three-sided encounter, somewhat. Though the flashbacks explained Max and sketched out what he tried to pass on to Caden (but will we get flashbacks for Kathryn and an explanation for her visit to her family at the beginning?) the build up had been for the three titular characters’ encounter, like a one act play with the occasional shot of the long, well-light, transparent modern house, and yet it didn’t quite work out like that.
As for the flashbacks, well they couldn’t find an American little kid with the right look, so they had a kid who couldn’t do the accent. They did a better job with the older kid, whose hairstyles helped orient us. I was left with the conviction that Hinds should do a Dickens character on scene, if he hasn’t already. So, apart from literally having lessons at the factory and giving him an abusive upbringing, he ensured that Max lost his virginity in a borderline Oedipal encounter that explained so much about Caden’s later sex life.
As for the family get-together, Max was indeed bullying – setting the terms, talking about threats from others, but certainly issuing them. Even after he’d revealed what he’d done and had a mini breakdown, he missed the point. And walked away, with Kathryn now having quite enough pieces to put together about what the man she’d married (and her son) had done. She was a reporter of some sort, of course. But I’m less exercised by the abused boy turns into privacy-shredding newspaper man and must be checked by publicity than thinking someone should give the second wife a heads-up. And I think it would have been meatier to have even more of stuff like her and Max rehashing the divorce with Caden something of a bystander.
I tended to think that Caden had dropped the plates on purpose, but I thought that it was stupid to give him that job in the first place when there were cloth placemats. However, I thought that Max was probably right about him sounding more like a man when he sought to protect Orla.
I thought the dramaturgical issue with this issue was that the flashbacks dissipated the tension of the three-sided encounter, somewhat. Though the flashbacks explained Max and sketched out what he tried to pass on to Caden (but will we get flashbacks for Kathryn and an explanation for her visit to her family at the beginning?) the build up had been for the three titular characters’ encounter, like a one act play with the occasional shot of the long, well-light, transparent modern house, and yet it didn’t quite work out like that.
As for the flashbacks, well they couldn’t find an American little kid with the right look, so they had a kid who couldn’t do the accent. They did a better job with the older kid, whose hairstyles helped orient us. I was left with the conviction that Hinds should do a Dickens character on scene, if he hasn’t already. So, apart from literally having lessons at the factory and giving him an abusive upbringing, he ensured that Max lost his virginity in a borderline Oedipal encounter that explained so much about Caden’s later sex life.
As for the family get-together, Max was indeed bullying – setting the terms, talking about threats from others, but certainly issuing them. Even after he’d revealed what he’d done and had a mini breakdown, he missed the point. And walked away, with Kathryn now having quite enough pieces to put together about what the man she’d married (and her son) had done. She was a reporter of some sort, of course. But I’m less exercised by the abused boy turns into privacy-shredding newspaper man and must be checked by publicity than thinking someone should give the second wife a heads-up. And I think it would have been meatier to have even more of stuff like her and Max rehashing the divorce with Caden something of a bystander.
I tended to think that Caden had dropped the plates on purpose, but I thought that it was stupid to give him that job in the first place when there were cloth placemats. However, I thought that Max was probably right about him sounding more like a man when he sought to protect Orla.
