Mammoth TV post
Apr. 28th, 2019 08:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallowness(Some of) what I've watched on TV lately:
MotherFatherSon 1.8
And so it ended quietly, with many of the men appearing to choose love and family, leaving the two women in battle: truth versus power.
Kathryn really wanted the job. As Caden said, it had been his job, because nepotism is always the answer, and it would change her (it did). But she still really wanted the job. I was with Maggie, all unnaturally hale in the hospice for her final interview, the price was too high. It was the timing that got to me. Max had already handed the premiership to Angela, despite his belated doubts. If the story had come out, it might have swung enough people not to vote for her.
Also, I laughed at the boyfriend kneeling and kissin Kathryn’s hands, possibly because my first thought at seeing Kathryn all dressed up in her goth take on Queen Elizabeth I was recalling that McCrory would have played Bellatrix if she weren’t pregnant. But the scene where she accepted the job interview contained some sizzle to explain Max/Kathryn in the past, and apart from underestimating Angela and being corrupted by the job, she seemed more up for it than Caden. (The Max-like file surely contained something on Angela’s family, though, because I agree that the job would have compromised her.)
Meanwhile, I was shocked by Angela’s family. In a show that is all about the nuclear family, and with the image she was going for, you’d have thought they’d have turned up before. And her son’s Christianity – surely that was something that could (perhaps should) have been explored in a show where Muslim and Jewish identity mattered. Anyway, in the conversation with her daughter (oooh, mummy got called a fascist, that’s bullying with a capital B – not) I kept thinking that it was likely the teachers who called Angela a fascist not one of the kids, and Angela’s definition was narrow. Anyway, the comparison between the electorate and a child was made.
Also, everyone must have noticed the number of votes.
I had all but forgotten about Caden’s addiction, so I was on his side when he railed about being locked in his flat by a stranger. It then turned out that he and Orla weren’t kidding about the gardening and the hens!? The repeat of the speech and the dancing were sweet, but not quite earned in that Caden didn’t face a public reckoning for what he’d done, and neither did Max, leading, yes, to Angela, but deaths and injustices we knew of getting swept under the carpet too.
Max’s mild journalistic instincts continued to twitch as he finally asked some questions about the ‘attack’ on Angela – oddly reminiscent of the attack on Lydia’s mum as she campaigned. And then, because he could, he left the country, a country he didn’t have a vote in, said the right things to convince wife no. 2 (he’d made his peace with son no. 1). But his conversation with the Mexican politician suggested he’d learned nothing, and the very final expression on his face as he held son no. 2 was ambiguous.
Lydia finally choosing her side – and meaning even his substitute daughter figure was turning against Max at that point – came a bit late, and was entirely framed around families. Mike and family left for Israel, while the ex-PM turned to his religion. And Angela was left in a seat of power to dismantle democracy…
I was expecting more confrontation, I suppose.
Ghosts 1.2 Guerrilla War
I laughed slightly more this time, mainly at Robin, but Allison getting pretty much terrorised by the noisy ghosts, all with their own quirky agendas – well, there’s a reason I don’t watch horror. It got resolved by co-operation – Alison as Alice in Wonderland? But moments like Kitty insisting on doing anachronistic mime, the head in the cabinet, the doctor being a ghost (satisfying because there had to be ghosts in the hospital) and the ghostly Greek chorus of experts on boilers hit the target. Must be hard for the actor playing Mike not to respond (or there are many outtakes).
B99 6.5
Either the show is funnier when I’m watching it live on my TV than when I’m catching up on my laptop or it was a funnier episode, even though I’m more with Jeffords than Peralta when it comes to Doug Judy (I was unsurprised that he’d faked his own death.)
I’m glad that the actors playing Hitchcock and Scully have got bumped up to the credits.
The only quibble I’d have with Holt dismissing the team’s feelings about Shaw’s was that it was very similar to the business with the crowded floor affecting morale, and that wasn’t very long ago. Rosa’s inappropriate chuckle about the firefighter dying going down the pole amused me, as did the whole DJing at a bar mitzvah.
The Bletchley Circle San Fransisco 2.1
I wasn’t sure if this would return, but it has! The big thing that needed to improve, I thought, was the plot, and er…At least, they made the drug gang/gay correspondents’ code so simple that the challenge for our ladies was to dumb down to break them. As we’d all assumed Edward was gay (and probably not played by a Brit), it’s just more a question of how they’d started intersecting and whether the beatings can be stopped, and the drugs’ gang brought to justice when justice is corrupt. Ha, I always sided with the bartender in last season’s triangle, although he hasn’t appeared yet. But the four main ladies, plus Olivia, have. And young Candace, who is as smart and curious as her mother, which may be a problem for her mother.
Lots of the women being patronised casually, but most of all for Hayley at home, where her useless-at-adulting boy poet flatmates never listened to her, messed with her stuff and, because she showed them up by being better at traditionally male stuff, like fixing stuff and earning money and paying rent, turned nasty verbally. Is she gay? Homosexuality was the theme of the case, with Jean referring to Turing if not by name. (Also, Jean’s limp has gone.) And Milly coming out as bi to her cousin. Her cousin who is a terrible landlord, by the way.
I still adore the look.
MotherFatherSon 1.8
And so it ended quietly, with many of the men appearing to choose love and family, leaving the two women in battle: truth versus power.
Kathryn really wanted the job. As Caden said, it had been his job, because nepotism is always the answer, and it would change her (it did). But she still really wanted the job. I was with Maggie, all unnaturally hale in the hospice for her final interview, the price was too high. It was the timing that got to me. Max had already handed the premiership to Angela, despite his belated doubts. If the story had come out, it might have swung enough people not to vote for her.
Also, I laughed at the boyfriend kneeling and kissin Kathryn’s hands, possibly because my first thought at seeing Kathryn all dressed up in her goth take on Queen Elizabeth I was recalling that McCrory would have played Bellatrix if she weren’t pregnant. But the scene where she accepted the job interview contained some sizzle to explain Max/Kathryn in the past, and apart from underestimating Angela and being corrupted by the job, she seemed more up for it than Caden. (The Max-like file surely contained something on Angela’s family, though, because I agree that the job would have compromised her.)
Meanwhile, I was shocked by Angela’s family. In a show that is all about the nuclear family, and with the image she was going for, you’d have thought they’d have turned up before. And her son’s Christianity – surely that was something that could (perhaps should) have been explored in a show where Muslim and Jewish identity mattered. Anyway, in the conversation with her daughter (oooh, mummy got called a fascist, that’s bullying with a capital B – not) I kept thinking that it was likely the teachers who called Angela a fascist not one of the kids, and Angela’s definition was narrow. Anyway, the comparison between the electorate and a child was made.
Also, everyone must have noticed the number of votes.
I had all but forgotten about Caden’s addiction, so I was on his side when he railed about being locked in his flat by a stranger. It then turned out that he and Orla weren’t kidding about the gardening and the hens!? The repeat of the speech and the dancing were sweet, but not quite earned in that Caden didn’t face a public reckoning for what he’d done, and neither did Max, leading, yes, to Angela, but deaths and injustices we knew of getting swept under the carpet too.
Max’s mild journalistic instincts continued to twitch as he finally asked some questions about the ‘attack’ on Angela – oddly reminiscent of the attack on Lydia’s mum as she campaigned. And then, because he could, he left the country, a country he didn’t have a vote in, said the right things to convince wife no. 2 (he’d made his peace with son no. 1). But his conversation with the Mexican politician suggested he’d learned nothing, and the very final expression on his face as he held son no. 2 was ambiguous.
Lydia finally choosing her side – and meaning even his substitute daughter figure was turning against Max at that point – came a bit late, and was entirely framed around families. Mike and family left for Israel, while the ex-PM turned to his religion. And Angela was left in a seat of power to dismantle democracy…
I was expecting more confrontation, I suppose.
Ghosts 1.2 Guerrilla War
I laughed slightly more this time, mainly at Robin, but Allison getting pretty much terrorised by the noisy ghosts, all with their own quirky agendas – well, there’s a reason I don’t watch horror. It got resolved by co-operation – Alison as Alice in Wonderland? But moments like Kitty insisting on doing anachronistic mime, the head in the cabinet, the doctor being a ghost (satisfying because there had to be ghosts in the hospital) and the ghostly Greek chorus of experts on boilers hit the target. Must be hard for the actor playing Mike not to respond (or there are many outtakes).
B99 6.5
Either the show is funnier when I’m watching it live on my TV than when I’m catching up on my laptop or it was a funnier episode, even though I’m more with Jeffords than Peralta when it comes to Doug Judy (I was unsurprised that he’d faked his own death.)
I’m glad that the actors playing Hitchcock and Scully have got bumped up to the credits.
The only quibble I’d have with Holt dismissing the team’s feelings about Shaw’s was that it was very similar to the business with the crowded floor affecting morale, and that wasn’t very long ago. Rosa’s inappropriate chuckle about the firefighter dying going down the pole amused me, as did the whole DJing at a bar mitzvah.
The Bletchley Circle San Fransisco 2.1
I wasn’t sure if this would return, but it has! The big thing that needed to improve, I thought, was the plot, and er…At least, they made the drug gang/gay correspondents’ code so simple that the challenge for our ladies was to dumb down to break them. As we’d all assumed Edward was gay (and probably not played by a Brit), it’s just more a question of how they’d started intersecting and whether the beatings can be stopped, and the drugs’ gang brought to justice when justice is corrupt. Ha, I always sided with the bartender in last season’s triangle, although he hasn’t appeared yet. But the four main ladies, plus Olivia, have. And young Candace, who is as smart and curious as her mother, which may be a problem for her mother.
Lots of the women being patronised casually, but most of all for Hayley at home, where her useless-at-adulting boy poet flatmates never listened to her, messed with her stuff and, because she showed them up by being better at traditionally male stuff, like fixing stuff and earning money and paying rent, turned nasty verbally. Is she gay? Homosexuality was the theme of the case, with Jean referring to Turing if not by name. (Also, Jean’s limp has gone.) And Milly coming out as bi to her cousin. Her cousin who is a terrible landlord, by the way.
I still adore the look.
