Other Weekend TV

[shipperx]

:
Outlander

Jamie Fraser remains a very pretty man.  Seriously, the sunlight on his auburn hair in all those picturesque shots is quite aesthetically pleasing.  A pretty man, indeed.

And I lust after Claire's amazing infinity scarves.

So basically, Claire got tossed back in time and became a 'prisoner' of a Laird who gives her great clothes so that she can get drunk a lot and ogle a pretty, pretty young man...  So why is she willing to risk death to go back to the stones again?  (Okay, there's a serious case to be made for adequate toilet facilities...)

Not spoiled, but can totally guess that Claire is soon going to be accused of being a witch by the pissed-off priest.

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Doctor Who

I... don't know.  I can see the Doctor about him, and yet he doesn't seem quite the Doctor to me (of course, the whole episode was hanging a lantern on that).  Liked the title re-design and the TARDIS re-design... not sure whether I love this Doctor yet.

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The Masters of Sex
Are we to like anyone on this show?  At all?  Horrid people with Masters being the most horrid of all.  It takes a lot to be a douchebag to your mistress/co-worker, your wife, your kids, AND your mother.  (Not that the wife or mistress are great people either).

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Intruders

It's got Darren Morgan involved so I'll give it a shot.  And I like James Frain.  That said... I dunno.  I have no clue what's going on.  The body swapping is confusing.  I hated the drowning of the cat.  And... we'll see.  I'll watch again but I'm not thrilled at the moment.

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Who Do You Think You Are
Watched way too many of those on re-run on TLC yesterday afternoon during a (much needed) rainstorm.  The show is basically a big Ancestry.com commercial with their tracing some celebrity's geneology.  I had seen The Big Bang Theory's Jim Parson's before (which was neat because he had an ancestor who was an architect at Versailles prior to the French Revolution).

Have to say that the most interesting one of this lot was Sex and the City's Miranda/Cynthia Nixon whose great grandmother turned out to be a convicted ax-murderer  (domestic abuse led to her killing her husband, which led to her being the first woman sent to prison in Missouri where the poor woman suffered yet more abuse it seems and was eventually pardoned because of the abuse + the baby conceived and delivered in prison).

Comments

[flake-sake.livejournal.com]

Plan to have a look at intruders but have not done so yet.

I like the new Doctor and I loved Vastra and Jenny and the Dinosaur. I still don't like the way Moffat writes women though. I feel sorry for Clara's actress because she has such stupid lines.

Saw the first eps of Outlander too. It don't think the writing works for a tv-show. Same problem True Blood had. Too much focus on a fairly boring romance. But maybe they will insert some plot after a while? Or the clean scott undresses more often?

Have to admit that I really like the credits though.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Vastra and Jenny were the best part of the episode. Fanfic for them must almost write itself (and be very fun).

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Are we to like anyone on this show? At all? Horrid people with Masters being the most horrid of all. It takes a lot to be a douchebag to your mistress/co-worker, your wife, your kids, AND your mother. (Not that the wife or mistress are great people either).

This appears to be the new trend for critically acclaimed serials - they are basically anti-hero tales, with lots of nasty people in the lead roles. If the people are at not nasty or don't do nasty things or are likable - then the show isn't considered well-written, etc.

They have to be rude assholes or anti-heroes. Or so I've noticed. Personally? I blame the Sopranoes for this.

* Mad Men
* Breaking Bad
* The Walking Dead
* Ray Donovan
* Boardwalk Empire
* Masters of Sex
* Scandal
* House
* Hannibal
* True Detective
* The Americans

Also, on the violent side. It's weird. Not sure what that says about us as a culture.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Mad Men handles it better, I think. None of them may be great but they have humanizing moments.

The problem with Masters of Sex is that I honestly don't see what most of the characters are getting out of it.

(Though Allison Janey certainly deserved her Emmy for her guest role. That plotline has been far and away the best one I've seen on the show. THOSE characters are sympathetic (often, the patients are. It's the primary characters that are shits).

Allison Janey and Beau Bridges play a long-married older couple with an adult daughter. They truly love one another. However Bridges character is gay (not that he would describe it that way). He's in deep, deep, deeeeeeeeep denial about it. It's the 1950s, so you understand the pressure to conform. The duo truly care for one another, but sexually... it's just not there. She doesn't understand why her husband doesn't desire her (and tends to blame herself for it. A lot). Seeing her unhappiness, he desperately wants to desire her. She's his wife and he truly cares about her... and it's just not where his sexual interest lies... but he TRIES. So it's both a good marriage (they are quite kind to one another, very companionable) and a desperately unhappy marriage.

Bridges wants Masters to 'fix' him so that he can desire his wife. Of course there isn't anything to BE fixed about him. He's just gay. He desires men, that's all. Masters tries to tell him that, but Bridges is so determined to 'be normal' that Bridges character sought out a psychiatrist who claimed to be able to fix him and who did electro-shock therapy on him. (Naturally that didn't make him suddenly heterosexual). Masters advised Bridges to not do that 'therapy' again (It made Bridges character amnesic and forget WHO. HE. WAS. for 24 hours!) Bridges later tried to hang himself, and Janey and the daughter found him and saved him before he died (but she can't understand WHY he would try to kill himself.) They're sympathetic characters but are just guest characters. They haven't even been seen in 4 episodes (and may never be again. It's been 'years ago' in show terms).

The main characters however... (tbc)

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

The main characters, however...(yeesh).

Masters (of Masters and Johnson fame) is doing the famous sex study. He's married to a pretty blond Betty Draper-type and is rather like Season 1 Don Draper at home -- cold, neglectful, distant, etc. Only unlike Draper, he also seems to dislike his kid(s). (Don may not be a great Dad, but he does generally actually care about Sally, etc.) Masters on the other hand is illustrated by the scene where he was left 'babysitting' his own toddler... who he left in screaming at the top of its lungs in its baby bed while he listened to opera. His mother dropped by, came in, heard the baby SCREAMING --that he was ignoring. She checked the baby, found the diaper was wet, then admonished her son for ignoring the baby. He flew into a fit for her criticizing, kicked his mother out of the house and forbid his mother from visiting... for YEARS. His wife returned home from the hair dresser, heard what he had done and all but burst into tears because she needed his mother as backup because HE certainly never wanted to take care of the child. Ever. So he told the wife to hire help.

Enter 'help' in the form of a young black maid. And if you think that the wife garnered audience sympathy with her cold husband and no help with the kid, she loses all sympathy here because the wife is very passive-aggressively racist. She treats that poor young helper like shit. Criticizing her, 'correcting' her, and creepiest of all, stalking the girl, to control who she associates with, what she does, etc. It's ookie and disgusting.

Meanwhile Masters is having an affair with Virginia Johnson (of Masters and Johnson). Johnson is his co-worker/assistant. Only Masters won't categorize it as an affair. He says they're just "doing research" (uh-huh). So there's this weirdly clinical/taking notes aspect to the affair... except its also very clearly an affair (after all they meet at a swanky hotel to do this 'research.') And he becomes very controlling and jealous if she dates someone (even though he insists that the two of them are only doing 'research'... that he keeps from his wife.) This "you aren't mine but no one else can have you" aspect (plus blatantly slutshaming her) "broke up" the relationship... though they continued the professional study. But given the number of years covered in just the last episode alone, this on-again-off-again affair has been going on for YEARS. He'd nastily slutshame her anytime she'd date someone else... while going to prostitutes himself... and the wife claiming that he hadn't slept with her in over a year yet he'd become sexually involved with Johnson again (still slutshaming her for any dating relationship she might have).

Meanwhile Johnson will socialize with his wife/listen to the relationship woes of the wife of the man she has an on-going affair with... for YEARS.

Other than Johnson having her name on "Masters and Johnson" I don't know WHY she would tolerate the slutshaming, the jealousy, the controlling, and the affair he refuses to call an affair but 'research', a man who bitches at her if she ever tries to have a relationship with someone (while he visits prostitutes... and is married) ... much less how in the hell she rationalizes being friends with the wife of the man she's sleeping with.

No one in that triangle is remotely sympathetic, and it's what dominates the show.

[silverusagi]

Hey, Hannibal is a polite asshole!

Ha, though, when you list it all out like that, it does seem like we have tons of acclaimed shows about horrible people. And it did seem to start with The Sopranos.

[silverusagi]

I am so lost after the last Masters of Sex episode. Not only is everyone horrible, but there are crazy time jumps? Or flashbacks? Libby is talking about wanting more treatments and then in the next scene she's there with a baby? What. It just seemed like everything is moving super fast. I'd think that Masters getting his own clinic set up would be a good ending point for this season, instead of the jump we got.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Libby is talking about wanting more treatments and then in the next scene she's there with a baby? What.



I know!

I was very -- Hey!.... What the hell...?!

[silverusagi]

Especially after how her treatments were such a big plot point in S1, and now it's just easy peasy, I guess. But I guess what I liked about S1 was how there was such a slow build and now that's just been thrown out the window. I also can barely keep track of whether Bill and Virginia are on or off emotionally because it's constantly flipping around. IDK, I liked the dynamic of S1 more. And I know the characters have always been flawed, but were they this completely horrible in S1?