Tee and Vee
Jul. 28th, 2019 09:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessGotham 5.8 Nothing’s Shocking
Oh, we’re following up the bit I didn’t remember from the previouslies involving the character played by Dan Hedaya. I’m presuming he was from season 3, although it’s not impossible that I forgot him. Also, I slightly burned my mouth eating something too hot at the killing of Babs’ two old informers, so I was in no mood for it to be one of those more horror-y episodes. But it was.
Alfred basically pressurised Bruce into some random vigilante investigation of the sewers.
Pen returned (insert ‘does he want to kill Gordon?’ query) with a puppet. Oh, Gotham. Was it linked to the Mission Impossible skin mask?
Ed was slowly realising he’d be doing all the work on the submarine escape plan and Oswald was just going to name it, shocker. (Is a pregnancy metaphor a stretch here?)
Harvey was OUTRAGED at a touch of professionalism as Jim benched him from investigating a case that was linked to an old case of his. I know it’s a shocking and unusual development. But as Dicks, at least, was holding out on Jim, it was a fair call.
Meanwhile, Alfred continued taking Bruce down the sewer near the poisoned river, where he saw a severed hand.
Ed and Oswald tried to denigrate Mr Pen’s creepy dummy – a comics staple? – and the henchman got it. At least we knew some stuff about him, unlike officer redshirt, who fell victim to the girl in the mask.
Useful lack of light for the sewer fights.
‘Jane Doe’ explained she was one of Indian Hill’s experiments. Sucks to be a ward of the state in Gotham. Jim, thinking she was telling the whole truth, by her lights, now had reason to have doubts of Harvey, so did we, except I’m glad to say I didn’t fall for it.
Also Babs, Jim wants you to have main custody of the kid so that you can deal with feeds, nappies etc and he can continue judging you. (For reprehensible deeds.)
Ed realised before Oswald that it was best to deal with the Mr Scarface persona, and dangled his silly submarine escape plan, I clung to a strand with just average show levels of gore and creepiness. Yes, the one with the ventriloquist’s dummy.
Alfred and Bruce were fighting some toxified brute, and Alfred definitely got scratched and pounding mad, but as the last words were ‘help’ one wondered could it be that the client’s husband was the real monster? Nice throwing action, Bruce.
Barbara dealing with Jane was satisfying.
Pen broke personas to tell Oswald himself how awful he’d been, which as Ed could testify, was entirely true. But yeah, Ed was right to kill him, because he’d just have got another dummy/object to express his murderous rage. While Ed and Oswald celebrated their friendship, Ed forgot that he is still going to have to do all the work.
I spent the confrontation between Harvey and Jane thinking how nice the net curtains were. I expected them to go for her face being like her mother’s or something instead of it being about her hating it. Fine acting from Logue in this and Harvey’s wrap-up scene with Jim.
I was overly suspicious about the nice husband. Sorry, sir. Bruce called Alfred out on the recklessness behind their trip to the sewer (YOU THINK?) and feeling guilty about Wayne Manor. The youngster was wise enough to know that family is more important than home. Not loving the new hairstyle, though.
I get that there were thematic links between Jane Doe and Mr Scarface, between Alfred and Harvey’s searches for absolution. But I didn’t like the too-far-into-horror approach, and more objectively, while Gotham is cut off, the A-story felt like the wrong one at the wrong time.
Poldark 5.1
I understand that Debbie Horsfield has made some stuff up as a bridge between novels and this will be the last series (they say for now, but it depends how actors’ careers go, I guess.)
A crammed full ‘previously’ reminded us to be sad about Elizabeth, but I couldn’t go along with it myself. A recast (again) Geoffrey Charles and the kids reminded us of how time has passed, which you wouldn’t know – Morwenna and Drake don’t seem like old marrieds compared to GC. But I’ll handwave that.
I liked the flashback to Virginia, even if it was about establishing Ross’s relationship with the new character, because it also showed us how he and Dwight first met, which I always thought the first series skimped on.
Slavery is the topic du jour, with the Warleggans on the side of profit at any price, while loyal friend Ross is kind of arrayed with the other side. More tellingly, so is new girl Cecily, who didn’t seem to care that she didn’t register with George, but did find GC charming. Strange lass. Ross and Dwight thought ‘better young love and plays than drink and gambling’ which is true, but he’s broke (though not as broke as unemployed miners) and she’s an heiress.
George was taking his loss hard, Valentine was reduced to hiding under furniture, but any time you felt minded to feel sorry for George, he was vile to GC (Trenwith is his) or stomping some more over the poor. And then he started hallucinating Elizabeth.
Until it was slightly overplayed, the scene at the graveyard was touching: two mothers visiting their daughters’ graves, and a motherless boy come to his mother’s grave. It cut through Demelza’s understandable issues with Elizabeth and Valentine’s origin. Although she and Ross remained in a happy place.
We also met a properly seditious common girl: Tess (not Emma mark 2, as one might be tempted to think due to the way Sam decided to ‘save her’). Demezla took note of her attitude in a scene where Tess was using the informal second person to bring Demelza to her leve, and Demelza was distancing her like whoa with the formal, although that’s also more respectful to someone you barely know. And I feel I have not observed this linguistic issue enough in the whole run, but probably because it’s not come up much. Demelza decided to lovebomb Tess with trust and the like, until arson attempts at Namparra made her scarper to London, where Ross stopped another assassination attempt on the king (I’m ignorant, I have no idea which king) and got offered a ‘covert’ position. I’ll believe Tess didn’t start the fire at Namparra herself, but probably knows who did.
Also, ROFL time, because Ross is so not covert, but Voice of Sense Dwight thought it was a good idea.
Meanwhile Morwenna is still not over her terror of intimacy, and Drake who wouldn’t hurt her on purpose still has the problem of fancying her. Things like this made me harden my heart to ‘now she’s dead, let’s overpraise Elizabeth.’ Somehow Mr and Mrs Drake managed to miss the family returning to Trenwith – bad housesitters! – but got away with it because the uncle thought they were another hallucination of George’s. Heh.
Caroline has a hate on London now, which seems contrary, or I’m forgetting something.
But this season has been set up, with a febrile background in That London and Cornwall, and the Poldarks and Warleggans are probably set for more confrontations.
Killing Eve season 2 finale
Kept up the standard, with genuinely shocking, powerful moments as the mission went spectacularly wrong (or did it?) It all kicked off with Aaron having minimal security on his spy computers, and Villanelle finding out his filming of her was prep for snuff movies. Despite her later backtracking/lie, she did use the safe word intentionally (oh the irony of said safe word), while dressed in a very dramatic, symbolic and not at all stealth read pantsuit. Cue Hugo getting shot.
Amid her flapping and drive to rescue Villanelle above all, there were fun little details like Eve not knowing the Italian emergency number, the thug asking her out on a date (but not her name, which apart from knowing he was a thug made him all the less charming) and then her taking a leaf out of The Ghost’s book and making her entrance as a maid.
The three-handed scene was high drama, and, like Eve, I thought Villanelle could kill her, although I had changed my mind about it happening as Aaron got excited. Eve didn’t. Such charged scenes ensued between the two women.
And then, Eve paid the price for not having swiped the info until Carolyn turned up and announced they’d got it, and were happy to let Villanelle out to dry. Finally some shoes dropped for Eve – that it had been a set-up (I hadn’t quite got there before, but unlike Eve, I’d never seen why you’d send an assassin to do a spy’s job) and that Kenny’s warning had come from a place of knowledge. And Carolyn had lied and lied, and used people without compunction. Eve stayed loyal to Villanelle, or her agreement with her, but she’s out of Carolyn’s ‘protection’ now.
Meanwhile Villanelle was facing her own handler on the most dramatic steps possible. Konstantin’s look ironically echoed a friar, right? Villanelle also learned it had been a set-up, and Konstantin was apologetically putting his family first, but Villanelle thought she and Eve were as good as family now and chose her, not the quick escape.
The confrontation with Raymond was darkly funny until the point it got physical, when I thought that Villanelle should have used the gun – to weaken him if she wanted to kill him with her bare hands or whatever, as he had a physical advantage. So that was in my mind from early on in the fight. Enter Eve, looking ridiculous carrying the axe, and the first strike was comedy, but then Villanelle’s suggestion, her attempt to make Eve a killer (Eve could have tried knocking him out, although his coming back was a threat) and it was back to gruesomeness.
And then, no, Villanelle, Eve didn’t react like you would, because whatever she is at this point, she’s still not actually a psychopath.
Carolyn’s outfit also came into its own on the staircase.
But we ended up at another ‘this is why we chose Rome’ location, as Villanelle realised Eve didn’t want to end up in an Alaskan shack with her (I’m sure there’s fanfic, love, although I can’t see how long Villanelle would last without killing someone), pulled her gun, and Eve realised Villanelle had set her up to kill Raymond and with all her feelings about that, what else she’d done and how it had gone down, shattered some of Villanelle’s illusions about her. That’s Villanelle the psychopathic killer with a gun.
I’m not convinced that her aim was true – she should have gone up to the body, checked, and shot again – although the continuity announcer did not tell us about a new series.
All that wasn’t in the episode was Nico. No name check, no nothing, although knowing what she’d done to him was in Villanelle’s mind.
Oh, we’re following up the bit I didn’t remember from the previouslies involving the character played by Dan Hedaya. I’m presuming he was from season 3, although it’s not impossible that I forgot him. Also, I slightly burned my mouth eating something too hot at the killing of Babs’ two old informers, so I was in no mood for it to be one of those more horror-y episodes. But it was.
Alfred basically pressurised Bruce into some random vigilante investigation of the sewers.
Pen returned (insert ‘does he want to kill Gordon?’ query) with a puppet. Oh, Gotham. Was it linked to the Mission Impossible skin mask?
Ed was slowly realising he’d be doing all the work on the submarine escape plan and Oswald was just going to name it, shocker. (Is a pregnancy metaphor a stretch here?)
Harvey was OUTRAGED at a touch of professionalism as Jim benched him from investigating a case that was linked to an old case of his. I know it’s a shocking and unusual development. But as Dicks, at least, was holding out on Jim, it was a fair call.
Meanwhile, Alfred continued taking Bruce down the sewer near the poisoned river, where he saw a severed hand.
Ed and Oswald tried to denigrate Mr Pen’s creepy dummy – a comics staple? – and the henchman got it. At least we knew some stuff about him, unlike officer redshirt, who fell victim to the girl in the mask.
Useful lack of light for the sewer fights.
‘Jane Doe’ explained she was one of Indian Hill’s experiments. Sucks to be a ward of the state in Gotham. Jim, thinking she was telling the whole truth, by her lights, now had reason to have doubts of Harvey, so did we, except I’m glad to say I didn’t fall for it.
Also Babs, Jim wants you to have main custody of the kid so that you can deal with feeds, nappies etc and he can continue judging you. (For reprehensible deeds.)
Ed realised before Oswald that it was best to deal with the Mr Scarface persona, and dangled his silly submarine escape plan, I clung to a strand with just average show levels of gore and creepiness. Yes, the one with the ventriloquist’s dummy.
Alfred and Bruce were fighting some toxified brute, and Alfred definitely got scratched and pounding mad, but as the last words were ‘help’ one wondered could it be that the client’s husband was the real monster? Nice throwing action, Bruce.
Barbara dealing with Jane was satisfying.
Pen broke personas to tell Oswald himself how awful he’d been, which as Ed could testify, was entirely true. But yeah, Ed was right to kill him, because he’d just have got another dummy/object to express his murderous rage. While Ed and Oswald celebrated their friendship, Ed forgot that he is still going to have to do all the work.
I spent the confrontation between Harvey and Jane thinking how nice the net curtains were. I expected them to go for her face being like her mother’s or something instead of it being about her hating it. Fine acting from Logue in this and Harvey’s wrap-up scene with Jim.
I was overly suspicious about the nice husband. Sorry, sir. Bruce called Alfred out on the recklessness behind their trip to the sewer (YOU THINK?) and feeling guilty about Wayne Manor. The youngster was wise enough to know that family is more important than home. Not loving the new hairstyle, though.
I get that there were thematic links between Jane Doe and Mr Scarface, between Alfred and Harvey’s searches for absolution. But I didn’t like the too-far-into-horror approach, and more objectively, while Gotham is cut off, the A-story felt like the wrong one at the wrong time.
Poldark 5.1
I understand that Debbie Horsfield has made some stuff up as a bridge between novels and this will be the last series (they say for now, but it depends how actors’ careers go, I guess.)
A crammed full ‘previously’ reminded us to be sad about Elizabeth, but I couldn’t go along with it myself. A recast (again) Geoffrey Charles and the kids reminded us of how time has passed, which you wouldn’t know – Morwenna and Drake don’t seem like old marrieds compared to GC. But I’ll handwave that.
I liked the flashback to Virginia, even if it was about establishing Ross’s relationship with the new character, because it also showed us how he and Dwight first met, which I always thought the first series skimped on.
Slavery is the topic du jour, with the Warleggans on the side of profit at any price, while loyal friend Ross is kind of arrayed with the other side. More tellingly, so is new girl Cecily, who didn’t seem to care that she didn’t register with George, but did find GC charming. Strange lass. Ross and Dwight thought ‘better young love and plays than drink and gambling’ which is true, but he’s broke (though not as broke as unemployed miners) and she’s an heiress.
George was taking his loss hard, Valentine was reduced to hiding under furniture, but any time you felt minded to feel sorry for George, he was vile to GC (Trenwith is his) or stomping some more over the poor. And then he started hallucinating Elizabeth.
Until it was slightly overplayed, the scene at the graveyard was touching: two mothers visiting their daughters’ graves, and a motherless boy come to his mother’s grave. It cut through Demelza’s understandable issues with Elizabeth and Valentine’s origin. Although she and Ross remained in a happy place.
We also met a properly seditious common girl: Tess (not Emma mark 2, as one might be tempted to think due to the way Sam decided to ‘save her’). Demezla took note of her attitude in a scene where Tess was using the informal second person to bring Demelza to her leve, and Demelza was distancing her like whoa with the formal, although that’s also more respectful to someone you barely know. And I feel I have not observed this linguistic issue enough in the whole run, but probably because it’s not come up much. Demelza decided to lovebomb Tess with trust and the like, until arson attempts at Namparra made her scarper to London, where Ross stopped another assassination attempt on the king (I’m ignorant, I have no idea which king) and got offered a ‘covert’ position. I’ll believe Tess didn’t start the fire at Namparra herself, but probably knows who did.
Also, ROFL time, because Ross is so not covert, but Voice of Sense Dwight thought it was a good idea.
Meanwhile Morwenna is still not over her terror of intimacy, and Drake who wouldn’t hurt her on purpose still has the problem of fancying her. Things like this made me harden my heart to ‘now she’s dead, let’s overpraise Elizabeth.’ Somehow Mr and Mrs Drake managed to miss the family returning to Trenwith – bad housesitters! – but got away with it because the uncle thought they were another hallucination of George’s. Heh.
Caroline has a hate on London now, which seems contrary, or I’m forgetting something.
But this season has been set up, with a febrile background in That London and Cornwall, and the Poldarks and Warleggans are probably set for more confrontations.
Killing Eve season 2 finale
Kept up the standard, with genuinely shocking, powerful moments as the mission went spectacularly wrong (or did it?) It all kicked off with Aaron having minimal security on his spy computers, and Villanelle finding out his filming of her was prep for snuff movies. Despite her later backtracking/lie, she did use the safe word intentionally (oh the irony of said safe word), while dressed in a very dramatic, symbolic and not at all stealth read pantsuit. Cue Hugo getting shot.
Amid her flapping and drive to rescue Villanelle above all, there were fun little details like Eve not knowing the Italian emergency number, the thug asking her out on a date (but not her name, which apart from knowing he was a thug made him all the less charming) and then her taking a leaf out of The Ghost’s book and making her entrance as a maid.
The three-handed scene was high drama, and, like Eve, I thought Villanelle could kill her, although I had changed my mind about it happening as Aaron got excited. Eve didn’t. Such charged scenes ensued between the two women.
And then, Eve paid the price for not having swiped the info until Carolyn turned up and announced they’d got it, and were happy to let Villanelle out to dry. Finally some shoes dropped for Eve – that it had been a set-up (I hadn’t quite got there before, but unlike Eve, I’d never seen why you’d send an assassin to do a spy’s job) and that Kenny’s warning had come from a place of knowledge. And Carolyn had lied and lied, and used people without compunction. Eve stayed loyal to Villanelle, or her agreement with her, but she’s out of Carolyn’s ‘protection’ now.
Meanwhile Villanelle was facing her own handler on the most dramatic steps possible. Konstantin’s look ironically echoed a friar, right? Villanelle also learned it had been a set-up, and Konstantin was apologetically putting his family first, but Villanelle thought she and Eve were as good as family now and chose her, not the quick escape.
The confrontation with Raymond was darkly funny until the point it got physical, when I thought that Villanelle should have used the gun – to weaken him if she wanted to kill him with her bare hands or whatever, as he had a physical advantage. So that was in my mind from early on in the fight. Enter Eve, looking ridiculous carrying the axe, and the first strike was comedy, but then Villanelle’s suggestion, her attempt to make Eve a killer (Eve could have tried knocking him out, although his coming back was a threat) and it was back to gruesomeness.
And then, no, Villanelle, Eve didn’t react like you would, because whatever she is at this point, she’s still not actually a psychopath.
Carolyn’s outfit also came into its own on the staircase.
But we ended up at another ‘this is why we chose Rome’ location, as Villanelle realised Eve didn’t want to end up in an Alaskan shack with her (I’m sure there’s fanfic, love, although I can’t see how long Villanelle would last without killing someone), pulled her gun, and Eve realised Villanelle had set her up to kill Raymond and with all her feelings about that, what else she’d done and how it had gone down, shattered some of Villanelle’s illusions about her. That’s Villanelle the psychopathic killer with a gun.
I’m not convinced that her aim was true – she should have gone up to the body, checked, and shot again – although the continuity announcer did not tell us about a new series.
All that wasn’t in the episode was Nico. No name check, no nothing, although knowing what she’d done to him was in Villanelle’s mind.
