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rsadelleMercy
Now that Friday Night Lights is over for the season, Mercy is tied for my favorite current show, and I'm sad I can't get anyone else to watch it. I love that the main characters are all women. I like that they haven't done some of the soapy things I would normally expect. I like that they've taken the soldier home from war story and turned it around by having the soldier be a nurse and a woman. I like the way their stunt casting actually works instead of being absurd and obvious. And, of course, I love that Mary Stuart Masterson is on it now; I've had a crush on her since I was 12 and saw Fried Green Tomatoes in theaters.
FlashForward
FlashForward is tied for my other favorite show, and no one else I know seems to be watching it either. I think this is a really good investigative sci fi show. One of the things I love about it is all the reveals. I almost never see them coming, and the show always makes me believe that once something has been revealed, it's the whole truth - even when it's not. One of my favorite characters has been the subject of three of those: Janice seems to be just your average everyday FBI agent. In her flash forward, she saw herself several months pregnant. Then we found out she's a lesbian. Then we found out she's a mole for the bad guys. While that was an awesome reveal, I was annoyed that they were making the lesbian the villain. This week we found out she's a double agent and that she let herself be recruited by the bad guys because she was working for the CIA. Plus, she's now pregnant, but instead of the sperm donor she was supposed to use, the father of her child is Demetri (John Cho), who was supposed to die but didn't - and who is engaged to someone else (Gabrielle Union).
As much as I love Janice, and Demetri, my favorite character in the whole show is Keiko, who we've only seen in a couple of episodes. Keiko and Bryce, who is one of the main characters, saw each other in their flash forwards, and we spent two episodes watching them miss each other. I love both that kind of trapped in their own destiny story and Keiko herself. She's an engineer who wants to play music, and who gets a tattoo and moves to the U.S. based on her flash forward. I would watch a whole show about her.
In Plain Sight
I've been amazed for the last two seasons by how much emotional ground In Plain Sight covers - and not in terms of its case of the week. It's Mary's emotional growth and life that impress me. At the end of last season, Mary got shot, and there was this amazing moment of Marshall's despair in the hospital hallway. I have to admit that I was a little disappointed by the season premiere because it didn't quite deal with that; but I think the fourth episode of this season (I'm a week behind because of the way USA delays posting to Hulu) redeemed it with the way Marshall deflects the sleazy FBI guy. I also both loved and sobbed at the way she goes to her mother when she and Raf break up. And I'm desperately curious about what Brandi's up to! I assume, from the "previously on" bits before she started being mysterious, that it has to do with their dad, but now I want to see it.
Other
Realistically, those are the only three shows I'm watching regularly. But there are two others I watched the first episodes of recently that I thought I'd mention for discussion purposes.
Happy Town
I was watching FlashForward when I saw an ad for this, and it looked like it was maybe ABC's answer to Harper's Island, which was not very good, but which I found engrossing. Sadly, Happy Town is a greatly inferior version, despite the presence of Amy Acker. At least that means I don't have to add it into my TV-watching rotation.
White Collar
I watched the first ep of White Collar last week. It was okay, and I can certainly see what people like about it. I did also download the second ep, which I'm planning to watch tomorrow, and we'll see if I watch any more than that. I very much like that Neal is so much like Tyson Ritter in both appearance and attitude, but there were some things I had problems with. There are two other things below the cut, but the scene that bothered me the most is this:
Neal's wearing an outfit that includes a hat, about which there is a lot of discussion. Neal tries to charm a woman who compliments the hat. Peter tells him he's not going to get anywhere with her.
Neal: But she likes the hat.
Peter: She'd rather be wearing the hat.
And then there's a moment where we watch Neal's face as he figures out what that means. It took me just as long as it took him to figure out that Peter was saying she was a lesbian, because "she'd rather be wearing the hat" conflates gender identity with sexual orientation. They aren't the same thing, and I was disappointed by the clumsiness.
I wasn't paying attention when people started watching this. Was there fannish discussion of that?
The other scene that bothered me, for completely different reasons, was the one where they're figuring out what the bond is worth. There's complicated math that the FBI agents are doing with calculators, and Neal does it in his head. The sum is just under a quarter of a million dollars. Then they say there are 600 of them, and they all look at Neal. First of all, it takes too long for Neal to figure it out. But more importantly: these are FBI agents working in white collar crime, where they must deal with numbers all the time. They should be able to divide 600 by four in their heads with no trouble.
I have to admit that one of the things keeping me from loving the show is that I took an instant and wholly irrational dislike to Elizabeth. Really, I have no idea where it came from, just that the instant she was on screen, I didn't like her. Knowing that Neal/Peter/Elizabeth is this fandom's OT3, I'll have to see if I like her better after another episode.
Now that Friday Night Lights is over for the season, Mercy is tied for my favorite current show, and I'm sad I can't get anyone else to watch it. I love that the main characters are all women. I like that they haven't done some of the soapy things I would normally expect. I like that they've taken the soldier home from war story and turned it around by having the soldier be a nurse and a woman. I like the way their stunt casting actually works instead of being absurd and obvious. And, of course, I love that Mary Stuart Masterson is on it now; I've had a crush on her since I was 12 and saw Fried Green Tomatoes in theaters.
FlashForward
FlashForward is tied for my other favorite show, and no one else I know seems to be watching it either. I think this is a really good investigative sci fi show. One of the things I love about it is all the reveals. I almost never see them coming, and the show always makes me believe that once something has been revealed, it's the whole truth - even when it's not. One of my favorite characters has been the subject of three of those: Janice seems to be just your average everyday FBI agent. In her flash forward, she saw herself several months pregnant. Then we found out she's a lesbian. Then we found out she's a mole for the bad guys. While that was an awesome reveal, I was annoyed that they were making the lesbian the villain. This week we found out she's a double agent and that she let herself be recruited by the bad guys because she was working for the CIA. Plus, she's now pregnant, but instead of the sperm donor she was supposed to use, the father of her child is Demetri (John Cho), who was supposed to die but didn't - and who is engaged to someone else (Gabrielle Union).
As much as I love Janice, and Demetri, my favorite character in the whole show is Keiko, who we've only seen in a couple of episodes. Keiko and Bryce, who is one of the main characters, saw each other in their flash forwards, and we spent two episodes watching them miss each other. I love both that kind of trapped in their own destiny story and Keiko herself. She's an engineer who wants to play music, and who gets a tattoo and moves to the U.S. based on her flash forward. I would watch a whole show about her.
In Plain Sight
I've been amazed for the last two seasons by how much emotional ground In Plain Sight covers - and not in terms of its case of the week. It's Mary's emotional growth and life that impress me. At the end of last season, Mary got shot, and there was this amazing moment of Marshall's despair in the hospital hallway. I have to admit that I was a little disappointed by the season premiere because it didn't quite deal with that; but I think the fourth episode of this season (I'm a week behind because of the way USA delays posting to Hulu) redeemed it with the way Marshall deflects the sleazy FBI guy. I also both loved and sobbed at the way she goes to her mother when she and Raf break up. And I'm desperately curious about what Brandi's up to! I assume, from the "previously on" bits before she started being mysterious, that it has to do with their dad, but now I want to see it.
Other
Realistically, those are the only three shows I'm watching regularly. But there are two others I watched the first episodes of recently that I thought I'd mention for discussion purposes.
Happy Town
I was watching FlashForward when I saw an ad for this, and it looked like it was maybe ABC's answer to Harper's Island, which was not very good, but which I found engrossing. Sadly, Happy Town is a greatly inferior version, despite the presence of Amy Acker. At least that means I don't have to add it into my TV-watching rotation.
White Collar
I watched the first ep of White Collar last week. It was okay, and I can certainly see what people like about it. I did also download the second ep, which I'm planning to watch tomorrow, and we'll see if I watch any more than that. I very much like that Neal is so much like Tyson Ritter in both appearance and attitude, but there were some things I had problems with. There are two other things below the cut, but the scene that bothered me the most is this:
Neal's wearing an outfit that includes a hat, about which there is a lot of discussion. Neal tries to charm a woman who compliments the hat. Peter tells him he's not going to get anywhere with her.
Neal: But she likes the hat.
Peter: She'd rather be wearing the hat.
And then there's a moment where we watch Neal's face as he figures out what that means. It took me just as long as it took him to figure out that Peter was saying she was a lesbian, because "she'd rather be wearing the hat" conflates gender identity with sexual orientation. They aren't the same thing, and I was disappointed by the clumsiness.
I wasn't paying attention when people started watching this. Was there fannish discussion of that?
The other scene that bothered me, for completely different reasons, was the one where they're figuring out what the bond is worth. There's complicated math that the FBI agents are doing with calculators, and Neal does it in his head. The sum is just under a quarter of a million dollars. Then they say there are 600 of them, and they all look at Neal. First of all, it takes too long for Neal to figure it out. But more importantly: these are FBI agents working in white collar crime, where they must deal with numbers all the time. They should be able to divide 600 by four in their heads with no trouble.
I have to admit that one of the things keeping me from loving the show is that I took an instant and wholly irrational dislike to Elizabeth. Really, I have no idea where it came from, just that the instant she was on screen, I didn't like her. Knowing that Neal/Peter/Elizabeth is this fandom's OT3, I'll have to see if I like her better after another episode.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-04 12:40 pm (UTC)(also, I think no one cared much about the hat comment because they were busy handflapping that there was a lesbian on the show at all.)
There are a lot of "keeps suspending that window, boys" things in most episodes of WC (I am pretty sure a third of the shit peter and neal pull off would never be upheld in court), but the interplay between all the characters (June! Moz! Jones!) and the clothes and the SNAP to the whole show, well. It makes it worth it for me.
At least we agree on FNL, and on In Plain Sight which is arguably one of the top ten shows on TV right now. I should make Sky check the ratings, because I don't know who else is watching it, but I hope MANY. Mary and Marshall have the best dynamic on TV. (Again, I wish that TPTB over there wouldn't make them a couple, but I won't stop watching if it goes that way. I like them too damn much.)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-04 08:56 pm (UTC)(Hah! I don't know if you read the behind the cut stuff about FlashForward, but they have a lesbian FBI agent whose plotline is about far more than the fact that she's a lesbian. This is also why I was less impressed: if the lesbian FBI agent is a trend, it's not as creative and innovative as I thought it was.)
I'm not sure if snap and interplay are quite enough for me if I don't care that much about the plot and don't have a lot of fully fleshed female characters to care about. :/ We'll see.
Mary and Marshall! Honestly, I can't imagine a guy who could handle Mary (well, Marshall, but I'm okay with them as just friends). Have we ever seen Marshall date? Because that would make Mary and Marshall's dynamic very interesting.