Learning what was in the bags
May. 23rd, 2019 07:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessChimerica ep 4 Neither East nor West
Been a while since I watched the previous episode. So, Trump had just won, Zhang Lin had just posted an indictment of the Chinese Communist Party and Lee was a failboat as a human being, missing out that his good friend was in as much danger as Tank Man, demeaning his girlfriend as if her time was less important than his mission (I was going to cite her work, too, but I’m kind of with Lee about that) and demanding help from the two women who we know are better journalists than him, after using blackmail to get the info he needed. Joy was right to tell Zhang Lin that he shouldn’t have spoken out for her, as her two kids ran around their dead grandmother’s place.
There were some twists that I found a bit of a stretch, like Tess’s emerging conscience. And as if she’d be brash enough to use That Picture as a sales pitch by that point. So for all Okened’s acting and the editing tricks as her presentation went pear-shaped and her pesky conscience (but no ghost for her) made her query the wisdom of what she’d been doing these past few months, I wasn’t buying it. Zhang Lin’s interrogation scene was more effective, although possibly the story about happy people being people who lie to themselves (and the whole ‘sleep’ thing) worked better because I was reading the subtitles. And then it was lampshaded by the Mulan quote.
Alex was dragged into Lee’s failboatiness, as he still didn’t read his Zhang Lin’s e-mail. Lee’s drive met Wang Pei Fei’s brother’s fear and that went pretty well. Not. The fact that sunflower guy was ‘the brother of’ and that the unknown hero was the driver of the tank who didn’t run down the man in front of the tank, was a very effective perspective shift, though.
And then Lee found out that the illegal immigrant wasn’t the only one with something to fear in the American legal system. (Although I never thought he might be killed or tortured, and the later line about him being a white middle class man and thus fine was true enough.) Why were both a reported and an editor at the police station so soon after the massive story of that man getting elected president?
Possibly Lee’s ‘involvement’ with protestors could have had more build-up - this was one of two ex-girlfriends - although I suppose the point was that his link to his ex was tenuous. And I don’t think the change at the top made much difference to Homeland Security’s agenda. He then got ripped into, rightly, for being a self-justifying liar. Again.
But he was about humble enough to accept Zhang Lin’s point that they’d always talked on his terms, in his language.
Moving forward to six months later was a bit of a whiplash moment, to wedding photographer Lee, merrily using Photoshop while learning Mandarin (aww) – and discovering pregnant part-time activist Tess, while an even higher stake activist Zhang Lin in China was making his dead wife happy. Aaand getting married. I’m presuming he discussed whether to escape or not with Joy, otherwise what was the point of getting married to her?
And so we got the (edited) death scene and the final reveal that the Tank Man was a suicidal, grieving widower carrying his dead wife’s belongings not shopping. Lee was finally open to hearing the truth and honouring it. In the final scene, was we saw him develop a film the old-fashioned way, I wished that we’d had more of that.
A mix of twists I bought and twists I didn’t, moments that I could see working better on stage – my feeling was that the pacing of this episode was off. And I found myself curious about Tess’s journey, had that been explored with the care that Lee’s blindness and hubris was revealed (paralleled by Zhang Lin’s journey) although it was more telling that it was the ‘regular’ (white/Chinese equivalent) middle-class guy, who thought he was on the good side. The show threw up interesting ideas, even if it wasn’t entirely successful.
Been a while since I watched the previous episode. So, Trump had just won, Zhang Lin had just posted an indictment of the Chinese Communist Party and Lee was a failboat as a human being, missing out that his good friend was in as much danger as Tank Man, demeaning his girlfriend as if her time was less important than his mission (I was going to cite her work, too, but I’m kind of with Lee about that) and demanding help from the two women who we know are better journalists than him, after using blackmail to get the info he needed. Joy was right to tell Zhang Lin that he shouldn’t have spoken out for her, as her two kids ran around their dead grandmother’s place.
There were some twists that I found a bit of a stretch, like Tess’s emerging conscience. And as if she’d be brash enough to use That Picture as a sales pitch by that point. So for all Okened’s acting and the editing tricks as her presentation went pear-shaped and her pesky conscience (but no ghost for her) made her query the wisdom of what she’d been doing these past few months, I wasn’t buying it. Zhang Lin’s interrogation scene was more effective, although possibly the story about happy people being people who lie to themselves (and the whole ‘sleep’ thing) worked better because I was reading the subtitles. And then it was lampshaded by the Mulan quote.
Alex was dragged into Lee’s failboatiness, as he still didn’t read his Zhang Lin’s e-mail. Lee’s drive met Wang Pei Fei’s brother’s fear and that went pretty well. Not. The fact that sunflower guy was ‘the brother of’ and that the unknown hero was the driver of the tank who didn’t run down the man in front of the tank, was a very effective perspective shift, though.
And then Lee found out that the illegal immigrant wasn’t the only one with something to fear in the American legal system. (Although I never thought he might be killed or tortured, and the later line about him being a white middle class man and thus fine was true enough.) Why were both a reported and an editor at the police station so soon after the massive story of that man getting elected president?
Possibly Lee’s ‘involvement’ with protestors could have had more build-up - this was one of two ex-girlfriends - although I suppose the point was that his link to his ex was tenuous. And I don’t think the change at the top made much difference to Homeland Security’s agenda. He then got ripped into, rightly, for being a self-justifying liar. Again.
But he was about humble enough to accept Zhang Lin’s point that they’d always talked on his terms, in his language.
Moving forward to six months later was a bit of a whiplash moment, to wedding photographer Lee, merrily using Photoshop while learning Mandarin (aww) – and discovering pregnant part-time activist Tess, while an even higher stake activist Zhang Lin in China was making his dead wife happy. Aaand getting married. I’m presuming he discussed whether to escape or not with Joy, otherwise what was the point of getting married to her?
And so we got the (edited) death scene and the final reveal that the Tank Man was a suicidal, grieving widower carrying his dead wife’s belongings not shopping. Lee was finally open to hearing the truth and honouring it. In the final scene, was we saw him develop a film the old-fashioned way, I wished that we’d had more of that.
A mix of twists I bought and twists I didn’t, moments that I could see working better on stage – my feeling was that the pacing of this episode was off. And I found myself curious about Tess’s journey, had that been explored with the care that Lee’s blindness and hubris was revealed (paralleled by Zhang Lin’s journey) although it was more telling that it was the ‘regular’ (white/Chinese equivalent) middle-class guy, who thought he was on the good side. The show threw up interesting ideas, even if it wasn’t entirely successful.
