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chocolatepotLife
It's so interesting how watching a show a few episodes a day can make you see things differently than watching an episode a week. When the second season of Life was on, I really hated Dani/Tidwell. It seemed to come out of nowhere, I was shipping Dani/Charlie, Tidwell was a jerk. On a second watch, that plotline seems to go a lot more smoothly and make more sense, and I haven't been shipping Dani/Charlie at all.
I feel like it might not have been cancelled if they could have just brought the conspiracy plot forward. The first season had a decent pace and ended with Charlie finding Rachel, accomplishing something. But in the second, the conspiracy plot was not moving fast enough for any kind of resolution by the end of the season, even if it hadn't been cancelled - same with Rachel's plot, there's not enough attention paid to her to get any kind of arc in. It's sad, though, watching it and knowing that it won't get resolved.
Parade's End
I was a bit biased against Parade's End at first, because someone implied that it was a "poor SWMs, it's so hard to be conservative" kind of story. But if anything it seems to be a grey-morality thing, with both Sylvia and Christopher treated as real people. Her complaint that Christopher is incredibly difficult to be married to because he's so perfect and cold makes sense to me, and because she seems to have a valid complaint and she's the character I like best, so. She wore a Delphos dress in ep 3, and even though it wasn't really the right situation for it it was still a mf'ing Delphos dress. Valentine is all right even if her hair is all wrong, but she and Christopher seem like a particularly horrendous pair to try to have a relationship and I hope they never manage to have sex.
Agora
UGH what a weird movie. The sets and costumes were pretty good (the sets were actually amazing), but I didn't care about stupid Davus after he joined the Christians. Basically the moment that he started non-consensually making out with Hypatia killed him for me. And then Hypatia was so awesome that I was annoyed whenever she wasn't on screen, and then I was REALLY annoyed that the ending was about how sad and noble it was that he suffocated her so she wouldn't have to die violently. Dude, if you distracted the other guys enough to kill her yourself, surely you could have gotten her out of there so she could keep doing science? With the implication that the Christians lied about killing her for morale reasons?
Julian Fellowes
Last night I watched Gosford Park with Dad (he slept through a chunk of it) and compared it to Downton Abbey all the time, and ... while on the one hand, I think he does create serious problems for himself wrt classism and the middle class, I completely don't understand accusations that he wants to return to that time. Gosford Park has Elsie flat-out saying it's ridiculous for them to have to live life through their employers, and Sir William is horribly exploitative. I don't want to pin it all on SJW, that's too easy, but I do think it's difficult for some people to separate depiction and endorsement when it comes to the servant characters who either don't long to leave for other work or who've worked their way to the top and therefore don't have it too bad. And part of that is that he tends to concentrate on higher-ranking servants, people who are heads of their own divisions of labor (lady's maids, butlers, cooks, head housemaids, etc.) and who are generally careerists, not in it just as a way to make money before getting married and settling down. Which makes sense from a writing standpoint, it's a lot more interesting than everyone hating their lives desperately and biding their time until they could get a job elsewhere, and gives them more excuses to interact with upstairs, but does lead to an unintentional picture of nearly all servants being devoted to their jobs and that being the most sympathetic. And in both there are episodes of tension with servants who don't believe in servitude, essentially, much more in DA than GP, but it's there a tiny bit in GP - again, in context it does make sense because you have these careerists who understandably don't like being told that their priorities are shit and feel that it's saying "I'm better than you," but of course it leads to the "troublemaker" not being quite sympathetic, and therefore a handy person to make unsympathetic in other situations. But I can't stand it being taken as an intentional statement, because it seems so clearly story-based to me.
But the class issues ... I think it's all unintentional, but he does have quite a hard time with the middle class, doesn't he? On GP it's really just Inspector Thomson and Commander Meredith (T. Hollander), and the former is noticeably dimmer than his constable and completely fails to understand the complicated relationship between employers and employees; Meredith is a Hollander Standard Character, kind of nervous and not socially adept. And in DA there's Matthew, Isobel, Lavinia, and Carlisle. Matthew becomes "one of us" as he begins to understand the aristocracy and take on their ways. Isobel goes off the rails in S2 (for story reasons that generally make sense to me), though she was a great presence in S1. Lavinia ... she's perfect, of course, but she literally dies so that Matthew and Mary can be together and then blesses them from beyond the grave. Carlisle is the trickiest, being a horrible personification of all the worst New Rich stereotypes, but at the same time he's a deliberate jab at Rupert Murdoch, isn't he? And Rupert Murdoch is evil, so you can't really avoid that.
Aw dang, now Amanda Abbington is getting death threats, apparently. :(
It's so interesting how watching a show a few episodes a day can make you see things differently than watching an episode a week. When the second season of Life was on, I really hated Dani/Tidwell. It seemed to come out of nowhere, I was shipping Dani/Charlie, Tidwell was a jerk. On a second watch, that plotline seems to go a lot more smoothly and make more sense, and I haven't been shipping Dani/Charlie at all.
I feel like it might not have been cancelled if they could have just brought the conspiracy plot forward. The first season had a decent pace and ended with Charlie finding Rachel, accomplishing something. But in the second, the conspiracy plot was not moving fast enough for any kind of resolution by the end of the season, even if it hadn't been cancelled - same with Rachel's plot, there's not enough attention paid to her to get any kind of arc in. It's sad, though, watching it and knowing that it won't get resolved.
Parade's End
I was a bit biased against Parade's End at first, because someone implied that it was a "poor SWMs, it's so hard to be conservative" kind of story. But if anything it seems to be a grey-morality thing, with both Sylvia and Christopher treated as real people. Her complaint that Christopher is incredibly difficult to be married to because he's so perfect and cold makes sense to me, and because she seems to have a valid complaint and she's the character I like best, so. She wore a Delphos dress in ep 3, and even though it wasn't really the right situation for it it was still a mf'ing Delphos dress. Valentine is all right even if her hair is all wrong, but she and Christopher seem like a particularly horrendous pair to try to have a relationship and I hope they never manage to have sex.
Agora
UGH what a weird movie. The sets and costumes were pretty good (the sets were actually amazing), but I didn't care about stupid Davus after he joined the Christians. Basically the moment that he started non-consensually making out with Hypatia killed him for me. And then Hypatia was so awesome that I was annoyed whenever she wasn't on screen, and then I was REALLY annoyed that the ending was about how sad and noble it was that he suffocated her so she wouldn't have to die violently. Dude, if you distracted the other guys enough to kill her yourself, surely you could have gotten her out of there so she could keep doing science? With the implication that the Christians lied about killing her for morale reasons?
Julian Fellowes
Last night I watched Gosford Park with Dad (he slept through a chunk of it) and compared it to Downton Abbey all the time, and ... while on the one hand, I think he does create serious problems for himself wrt classism and the middle class, I completely don't understand accusations that he wants to return to that time. Gosford Park has Elsie flat-out saying it's ridiculous for them to have to live life through their employers, and Sir William is horribly exploitative. I don't want to pin it all on SJW, that's too easy, but I do think it's difficult for some people to separate depiction and endorsement when it comes to the servant characters who either don't long to leave for other work or who've worked their way to the top and therefore don't have it too bad. And part of that is that he tends to concentrate on higher-ranking servants, people who are heads of their own divisions of labor (lady's maids, butlers, cooks, head housemaids, etc.) and who are generally careerists, not in it just as a way to make money before getting married and settling down. Which makes sense from a writing standpoint, it's a lot more interesting than everyone hating their lives desperately and biding their time until they could get a job elsewhere, and gives them more excuses to interact with upstairs, but does lead to an unintentional picture of nearly all servants being devoted to their jobs and that being the most sympathetic. And in both there are episodes of tension with servants who don't believe in servitude, essentially, much more in DA than GP, but it's there a tiny bit in GP - again, in context it does make sense because you have these careerists who understandably don't like being told that their priorities are shit and feel that it's saying "I'm better than you," but of course it leads to the "troublemaker" not being quite sympathetic, and therefore a handy person to make unsympathetic in other situations. But I can't stand it being taken as an intentional statement, because it seems so clearly story-based to me.
But the class issues ... I think it's all unintentional, but he does have quite a hard time with the middle class, doesn't he? On GP it's really just Inspector Thomson and Commander Meredith (T. Hollander), and the former is noticeably dimmer than his constable and completely fails to understand the complicated relationship between employers and employees; Meredith is a Hollander Standard Character, kind of nervous and not socially adept. And in DA there's Matthew, Isobel, Lavinia, and Carlisle. Matthew becomes "one of us" as he begins to understand the aristocracy and take on their ways. Isobel goes off the rails in S2 (for story reasons that generally make sense to me), though she was a great presence in S1. Lavinia ... she's perfect, of course, but she literally dies so that Matthew and Mary can be together and then blesses them from beyond the grave. Carlisle is the trickiest, being a horrible personification of all the worst New Rich stereotypes, but at the same time he's a deliberate jab at Rupert Murdoch, isn't he? And Rupert Murdoch is evil, so you can't really avoid that.
Aw dang, now Amanda Abbington is getting death threats, apparently. :(
