Ruth Sadelle Alderson

This started with lakeeffectgirl asking if she should watch The Pitt or The White Lotus next. I offered to watch one of them with her, so we're now watching The Pitt together at a slower pace, but in the meantime, I binged all three seasons of The White Lotus in approximately a week. I'm not sure I liked it, but it is extremely watchable. Then I made the perennial mistake of reading Tumblr posts in the tag (instead of curated by people I trust) and now I have some things to say about it. I'm trying to just throw things out there instead of writing a full essay-style post so I can actually finish this, so if you don't know anything about the show, this probably won't make sense.

( Spoilers )

I have been thinking about this a lot, so this is a handful of semi-thought-out points so I don't have to actually watch the show and write something more put together.

Caveats:

1. I have not watched the show. I have read a lot of fic, watched some clips on YouTube, and backread a couple of Tumblrs, but not watched the actual show. Probably there are things in here that I would have a different opinion about if I did.


2. I am a #FannishRebel4Life. The phrasing of that is mostly a joke, but I have a long history of being a rebel when it comes to fandom. Sometimes that means I see something and think "obviously A" and then find out that everyone else's perspective on it is "obviously NotA"; sometimes it means that I see everyone approaching something one way and want to do a different thing out of contrariness.

I am absolutely fascinated by 9-1-1 fandom's relationship to masculinity and how unnuanced it seems. I also want to be clear that I don't think anyone is doing this on purpose, but that it's coming out of an interesting cultural context around masculinity and queerness.

Buck's Bisexuality and Straight White Masculinity
I saw a gifset of Oliver Stark talking about how the show has always had queer characters, but people are upset about Buck being queer. Surely someone somewhere in this fandom has written about how that's about masculinity. Masculinity, particularly straight white masculinity, has such a foundation of (a) opposition to femininity and (b) power, specifically power over others, and that includes being the dominant sexual partner. People have spent six seasons getting to know Buck as a big manly man who has sex with hot girls. It's okay that he wears pink and has emotional reactions to things because he's still big and manly. But kissing men and having sex with men is something women do, and that's a real step too far in the mainstream construction of acceptable masculinity. I expect it's made even worse by the fact that Tommy is also a big manly man and he kisses Buck first; not only is Buck having sex with a man, but now they have to contend with the fact that maybe he's the one sucking cock and getting fucked. For people who have looked at or up to, or identified with, Buck and his masculinity, it's a lot easier to just get mad about it than to re-examine their ideas about what it means to be a man.

A Sidenote About Buck and Whiteness
I read a lot of fic before I ever looked up what the characters looked like, and I was very surprised to learn that Buck is extremely not blonde. His hair is barely even lighter than Eddie's. And yet so much fic calls him blonde. I mentioned this on Twitter, and someone said she's seen Black women talking about white people describing people as blonde as being about whiteness, not about actual hair color. So now every time I read someone calling Buck blonde, I both think they don't know what that word means and am acutely aware that what they're really doing, probably unconsciously, is emphasizing that he's white.

The Abundance of "Girl Dad" Fic
I loathe the term "girl dad." It is ridiculously and unnecessarily gendered and reinforces the idea that parents can/should treat their kids differently based on their gender. I am also deeply fascinated by how much of the Buck accidental baby acquisition, Buck and Eddie adopt a child, and even Buck and Tommy adopt a child fic is about Buck having a daughter, much of which is tagged, summarized, or noted with some variation of "girl dad." I expect at least part of this is about defining masculinity by the ways it contrasts and interacts with femininity. Buck is still a big manly man, so it's okay when he's super sweet to a little girl. And there's probably some wish fulfillment from women whose dads were not that kind of sweet and gentle with them, or whose partners aren't that way with their children. But, again, this isn't really taking a nuanced look at masculinity. It's okay because they're girls, but where is the fic about Buck being that kind of gentle and adoring about a little boy? I'm pretty sure them parenting a(nother) boy isn't interesting to people the way the contrast of their masculinity with the femininity of a little girl is because it's still very much about the acceptable bounds of masculinity.

Eddie's Sexuality
I am so deeply fascinated by how much people have decided that Eddie is gay. I mean, not that he couldn't be, but that they don't think bisexual is even a possibility. From the outside, I have a lot of questions about how much that's supported by the text. I really wonder how much of it is a combination of him being pretty with a tendency toward emotional repression and catty remarks, combined with his failed relationships with women, and that's not a collection of traits we accept in straight men. But we're talking about a guy with PTSD and Catholic guilt who is single parenting a special needs child, and who married the first girl he fell in love with, was separated from her for years, then they reconnected, then she told him she wanted a divorce, and then she died. I just don't think homosexuality is the only possible explanation for his relationship issues.

I know there might have been more character development this season that I haven't watched clips of, but I have real issues with the way fic deals with Eddie's feelings for Shannon. I've read a lot of it about how they never really loved each other and it never could have worked and it was always a mistake. Which, okay, maybe it never would have worked out. But it seemed very clear to me from the clips I watched that Eddie's perspective was very much that he truly loved her. When fandom dismisses that, it doesn't seem like they're respecting or representing who the character actually is. Maybe it wouldn't have worked out, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a deeply important relationship to him. Part of why I'm so sensitive to this because I've been in fandom for 25+ years, and I'm very, very familiar with fandom's "ew, a woman is in the way of our ship" brand of misogyny. To be fair to this fandom, (a) when they hate a character, they do tag the fic "[character name] bashing" so it's easy to avoid, and (b) I've run into a handful of things tagged "Tommy bashing," so they're not confining it to hating women who are in the way of their ship.

Conclusion: Old Fangirl Yells At Cloud
I'm not sure I want to watch seven seasons of this show to write fic out of spite (I already watched eight seasons of House so I could more accurately side-eye takes on Tumblr out of spite earlier this year), but if I did, I would definitely be doing something different from what the rest of this fandom seems to be doing. I'm not sure if fandom has really changed or if it's an effect of being An Old now, but it seems like a lot of popular fandoms are getting less connected to the source material and more rigid about gender roles, both of which are disappointing to me.

I watched Black Sails recently, and for the last twelve episodes of the show (out of 38), I just sat and watched without doing anything else because I was so absorbed in it.

( Spoilers, etc. )

I'm fascinated that there's so little interest in Leverage: Redemption season 2. I don't mean "why is no one talking about this??!!!?111?"; I mean I follow multiple Leverage blogs on Tumblr and none of them are posting about it.

( Spoilers for Season 2 Episodes 5 and 6 )

Content notes: spoilers; discussion of self-harm, suicidal ideation, and underage sex


The basic premise of the show is that Georgia, who had Ginny (full name Virginia) when she was fifteen, moves with fifteen-year-old Ginny and nine-year-old Austin to Wellsbury, Massachusetts. Georgia's husband just died, she has promised Ginny and Austin that it will be just the three of them in Wellsbury, and Wellsbury is a wealthy place.

I could not look away from this show, and I'm not sure who it's supposed to be for. It seems like there's too much of the grownups to be a show for teenagers, it seems like there's too much teenage drama to be a show for adults, and there's definitely way too much teenage sex for it to be a family watch together show. There was, frankly, a little too much teenage sex for me. I think it was well done and appropriate to the show, but, uh, apparently I have become an old lady who does not want to watch it.

( Spoilers )

Here's the basic premise of Filthy Rich: Eugene and Margaret Monreaux are the white, extremely wealthy power couple heading up the Sunshine Network, an evangelical Christian TV network. They have two adult children: Eric and Rose. Eric is married to Becky, who is pregnant and whose brother Paul, aka The Reverend, is one of the stars of the network. Rose wants to be a fashion designer; Eric truly believes in the company and its missionary work. Eugene's plane crashes, and his will provides for three additional adult children outside his marriage: Ginger, Jason, and Antonio. Ginger runs a successful porn site based in Las Vegas. Jason is a pot grower and dealer in Colorado. Antonio is an MMA fighter in New York and a single father with a very young son.

( 3700 Words of Spoilers and Opinions )

I read Celeste Ng's Little Fires Everywhere in 2018 - twice, because I wanted to read it a second time after I knew what happened. I reread it again this year after I watched the miniseries because I wasn't sure how I felt about two of the changes.

There are two things I thought were fantastic about the miniseries:

First, they got the late 90s vibe completely right. I knew all of the songs, and I wasn't sure if the 90s vibe felt so right because it was what the 90s were really like or because it so perfectly matched 90s teen movie vibes. I was in high school in 1997, and the downside to the excellent 90s vibe is that I couldn't tell if some of the things that I found cringy on behalf of the characters were because they were generally cringy behavior (in a way that was a deliberate part of the story) or because they were giving me mild flashbacks to my own teenage years.

Secondly, with only one misstep (AnnaSophia Robb as a younger Elena), the casting is phenomenal. In particular, the actors playing Lexie, Trip, and Moody are absolutely perfect. I saw Joshua Jackson and Reese Witherspoon in things when they were that age, and the only way Lexie, Trip, and Moody could have been better matches as their children would be if you could go back in time and bring teenage Josh and Reese forward to play them.

Now, the two changes I didn't like. ( Spoilers )

Hiya, Dreamwidth friends! Here is a periodic post about pop culture things I wanted to write a few paragraphs about. They are solely in the order I felt like writing about them. I think I appropriately cut tagged all the spoilers, but let me know if I need to move any of the cut tags. Also, don't spoil me for anything that happens later in the show I'm not caught up on.


Russian Doll (Netflix TV show)
I read Emily Nussbaum's review a couple of months ago, and I was intrigued by it. She calls the show "propulsive and joyful," and I fully agree with that. The basic plot is that Nadia keeps dying, over and over again, and resetting into her friends' apartment bathroom at her birthday party. This could be really grim, but it's not. It's very light, and it's fun to watch how things change as she resets. ( Spoilers )


Alias Grace (Netflix TV show)
I'm not sure how I feel about this show. I will admit that I only half paid attention to it while I was watching it. There's a layered narrative to the show: there's a Grace voiceover that's addressed to Dr. Jordan, we see her telling him about her life, and we see flashbacks of that life. In my head, I kept hearing Roxy Hart saying, "Yeah, but did she do it?" while I was watching it. ( Spoilers )


The Witch Files (movie)
I genuinely thought this was going to be a terrible movie, and then it turned out to be actually good. Netflix categorizes it as "Teen Scream," but if you are not a fond of scary movies, I can tell you I found it much less scary than The Craft, which I have seen many times and can still make me jump. The Witch Files is structured in a found footage style, which I think is supposed to make it seem more real, but for me it made it that much more obvious that it wasn't and that I was watching a movie. (Note: most of it is shot from a steady camera - a video camera on a tripod, security cameras, phones propped up - but there are a few dizzying motion bits.)

I don't know what I liked so much about this movie. Maybe that it was about girls from completely different social circles coming together in a coven and the way our main character investigates the mystery when bad things start happening to them. I thought it was a fun supernatural story worth watching.


Set It Up (Netflix movie)
This was a good reminder to me that I should try out popular things on the upswing and not wait until they're overhyped. I really wanted to like this! I like rom-coms! Other people who like the same things I do liked this! I did not like this.

( Spoilers )


Isn't It Romantic (movie)
This movie I did like! The premise seems like it could be bad, but the trailer was funny, so I went with some friends, which was an excellent choice. This movie is completely hilarious, and the audience when I saw it was almost entirely groups of women who were all laughing. Blurbs call it a "satire" of romantic comedies, which I disagree with because I think satires are more biting, and this wasn't mean-spirited at all. It plays with rom-com tropes in ways that point out they're ridiculous without putting down characters in them or viewers who enjoy them. Also, Rebel Wilson is such a great comedic actor, and she was surrounded by other people who leaned into the over-the-topness of rom-com formula elements.


Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis (books)
I reread both of these recently for the first time in years. I had really forgotten how (a) dark and (b) religious Doomsday Book is (which makes my having loved it as teenage/early twenties me totally on brand), and it turned out I remembered almost nothing about the plots of either of them. ( Spoilers )


The Last Day of Emily Lindsey by Nic Joseph (book)
I've been reading a lot of things from the library's suspense/thriller ebook categories recently. Most of them have been on the spectrum from not very good to terrible, but this one was good. If you can read this without being spoiled, I highly recommend it because I think it works well with slow reveals.

( Spoilers )


Marcella (TV show)
I do not recommend this show. On the other hand, I got emotionally involved in the character and it helped me realize what I do and don't like in crime shows. This show has way too much onscreen violence and way too many threads that take too long to connect with too many similar looking white dudes who were hard to tell apart. ( Spoilers/Violence/Child Death )


Fighting With My Family (movie)
This was so good! Saraya, whose stage name is Paige, grows up in a family that runs its own wrestling school/shows in Norwich. She and her brother try out for WWE training. She gets in; he doesn't. ( Spoilers )


Wynonna Earp (TV show)
If you like the siblings hunting demons element of Supernatural but wish they were sisters, this show might be for you! Every time the Earp Heir turns twenty-seven, everyone Wyatt Earp killed comes back as revenants. The Heir can kill the revenants with Peacemaker, Wyatt's gun. Wynonna Earp is the current heir.

( Spoilers )

For the record, I loved the premiere of Hockey Wives. I watched it with focused attention (I closed both Firefox and my Twitter client), and with my knees clasped to my chest in delight. I know it's a manipulated reality show, and I still found it to be a fascinating look into the lives of a handful of women (there are ten on the show, but only five featured in the first episode) partnered to hockey players. That said, I think there's a lot of material there for critical commentary.

( Commentary )

I get enough (a) dudes and (b) plot/things happening from following hockey, so what I really want out of TV right now is (a) women and (b) emotions/melodrama. I also enjoy quiet, restful crime shows, like The Killing and Broadchurch, but none of them are current at the moment, so they got left out of this post. This is just stuff I'm watching right now. I've only picked up one new show for sure and two more maybes this season, so if you have suggestions for something else new I should try out, or if you want to talk about any of these, I would be into that! (Note: I haven't watched this week's ep of Revenge yet. I won't be upset if you spoil me, but I won't know what you're talking about until tomorrow evening.)

Shows I'm Watching

Nashville - I almost gave up on Nashville after two episodes. I started watching it because it had singing and Connie Britton, and then her character wasn't very interesting. I was bored, though, and watching a lot of TV, so I ended up watching a few more episodes, and eventually I was hooked, but not because of Connie Britton. Rayna's storyline is the most boring one on the show. The interesting ones are those of the other two women: Scarlett and Juliette.

( Spoilers )

Grey's Anatomy - I watched Grey's Anatomy for a couple of seasons and then gave up on it. A while back, I had an urge to watch the first ep of it, and then I ended up watching something like seven and a half seasons in about six weeks, so I was completely caught up, and I've been watching it ever since. It is definitely one of those shows where you can see the writers run out of ideas every so often, but when it's about Meredith and her people, it's really good (in a soap opera way). ( Spoilers )

Scandal - I don't know that I actually like Scandal all that much, but it's an involving enough melodrama and I do like reading the Racialicious posts about it, so I keep watching. ( Spoilers )

Reign - Reign was on my to try out list anyway, and then allegram suggested I might like it, so I watched the first episode. It is ridiculous, in a really good way. They really aren't trying to make it historically accurate, and it's obviously just a soap opera. But it's about Mary, Queen of Scots at the French court (somehow there's never any language confusion; see above, re: lack of accuracy), which means that not only do you get over the top, if inaccurate, outfits, but also that Nostradamus is a character. Nostradamus! Amazing. (I had to Wikipedia him to check and see if that was historically accurate - it is - or if it was just bonus ridiculousness they threw in there.) ( Spoilers )

Shows I'm Sort Of/Maybe Watching

Revenge - I don't know that I really like Revenge, but I keep watching it. I usually get caught up on TV over the weekend, and then this airs on Sunday, so it's there to be ridiculous melodrama for me to watch on Monday or Tuesday. ( Spoilers )

Haven - I used to really like Haven, but now I don't really care. It's one of those shows where it's gone on too long and they need to wrap up the story. ( Spoilers )

Hostages - The premise of Hostages is really interesting - a surgeon, who was chosen to operate on the president, and her family are taken hostage and told they'll be let go when she gives the president a drug that will kill him - and it has Toni Colette, who is great. (Also of fannish interest: Sandrine Holt!) The show is okay. I think it would be better as a movie or miniseries where they didn't have to keep stretching out the situation. I will probably watch another episode or two to see if I get into it more before I decide to ditch it altogether.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine - I liked the first two episodes of Brooklyn Nine-Nine. I thought the third one wasn't as good, and Andy Samberg's delivery being very, very Jimmy Fallon-like started to bother me. I don't know if that was more about the show or about me - I watched it on a different day than the first two - so I will definitely give it another episode or two, especially since I like having a half-hour show to fit into those times when I want to watch something but only for half an hour. For those of you who don't watch comedies because of an embarrassment squick, the first two eps (but maybe not the third) would be doable for you. There are places that seem like they're going in an embarrassing direction, but the characters aren't embarrassed, so it didn't feel embarrassing to me. It also has some good jokes, and some good, extremely subtle and easy to miss jokes (look for the binders behind Andre Braugher's desk). The biggest downside is probably that it thinks Andy Samberg should be the main character when Andre Braugher and Stephanie Beatriz are much more interesting.