1. Bates Motel
Man, this was rough. I mean, for starters, you’ve gotta buy that Norman Bates moves into town and is immediately set upon by a roving band of attractive girls. I realize this is a more realistic reaction to a nerdily attractive British teenager than in Amazing Spider-Man, where everyone treated Andrew Garfield like he had the plague—wait, except then fucking Emma Stone hit on HIM, that movie was so dumb—but still. On the first day? And after knowing him for five minutes, the lead girl has this line about how he’s a deep dark lake or something? In a cement world? Like, damn, gurl, wait five minutes before you share your emo poetry. It’ll hold!
Plus, there was a rape scene that really played like it was done the way it was done for shock value rather than good taste. Like, you’d have to be really generous to not see that scene as gratuitous. The howling bad dialogue later on does not sell it as dramatically necessary.
(Sample lines: “I’m sorry that dirtbag raped me.” “Who would want to stay at the murder-rape hotel?”)
Ehhhhhhhhh.
2. Elementary
So I finally watched the episode of Elementary that everyone’s all up about and I do not get you, tumblr. I don’t.
Sherlock: We’re making Irene Adler a lesbian dominatrix.
Tumblr: BOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Elementary: We’re making Mrs. Hudson a transgender* gold digger.
Tumblr: YAAAAAAAAAY!
*By the way, is there any difference between transgender and transsexual? Because I've heard actual trans people using them interchangeably, so if we're doing a thing where one of them is a hate word and the other is the preferred nomenclature, can we not do it with two words that start with the same five letters and then end with the same amount of letters? I'm just saying, this is exactly why we don't say 'niggle' anymore.
3. Doctor Who
You know, didn’t enjoy this one either. It seemed way too weird and vague and a little anti-religious. Not even in a considered or provocative way, just in a kinda lame way. I’m pretty sure “silly space aliens, your god is a cosmic boogaloo!” should’ve been retired back when DS9 did it, since no one’s going to do it better anyway. And then I’m not sure why or how anything was happening.
So the Doctor takes Clara to see something awesome, which turns out to be a religious rite wherein a little girl will keep a sleeping god sleeping. The fact that this does not ring a million alarm bells makes me think that while the Doctor has been all over time and space, he has not been to TV Tropes. But anyway, he thinks it’s going to be one of those completely innocent rituals where little girls keep sleeping gods under, otherwise he just thinks Clara would find child murder awesome and is making the world’s most spectacular recovery from that. Onward!
But then Mary messes up the song to keep TSGS, so the Plan B is for it to eat her soul, or maybe that was Plan A? No one really seems sure. I thought there was some sort of problem or sabotage in the ritual, which otherwise seemed fairly benign—the believers got a nice sun and a fun culture, while the sleeping god got fed and stayed asleep. But apparently it actually ate little girls—which are/were somehow more filling than eating whole planets/star systems/galaxies?
Anyway, the Doctor gets two big speeches to give, one of which is lifted whole-sale from Carl Sagan’s famous “star stuff” quote (I think there’s a version of it that ends “Forget Jesus, stars died so you could be born,” which adds to the weird anti-religion vibe of the episode—odd, since there aren’t any religions that practice human sacrifice. It’s rather like getting upset with marijuana users over all those high-speed chases they embark on. And, taken at face value, the subtext treads the old “atheists are angry at God” characterization. In the Whoniverse, God is real and you yell at Him for being mean).
The other is no great shakes either, your standard “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe” monologue, but hey, any hero worth his salt is entitled to one of those. Although then it doesn’t work and the Doctor needs Clara to step in and say she writes AU fanfics, which manages to kill the sun. Which I guess no one was using.
I would’ve expected better from the writer, since he also did Luthor, but then I remembered the episode where Idris Elba had to fight killer RPG players and won by saying he was the level boss.
Also, who on the writing staff hates the make-up guys?
“Alright, for this episode, we’re going to need a hundred aliens for crowd scenes.”
“Okay.”
“And then a costume of the god they’re worshiping, who will of course look like death with a hangover, since that wouldn’t raise any red flags.”
“Gotcha.”
“Then their god also has these Cenobites he sends out instead of doing things himself.”
“Oh, fuck off.”
4. The Lost Girl where Bo misses Lauren's Award For Outstanding Achievement In The Field of Excellence
Man. Who knew so many Dark Fae were steampunk enthusiasts?
I don’t know, guys, for some reason when Neil Gaiman has stuff like people going to get a top from a woman in a beanie so they can get a special beanbag chair that teleports them to the land of top hats, it’s fun and charming. And when Lost Girl does it I just want to slap a hipster. Like, isn’t the whole premise of this that the Fae blend into the modern world while paying homage to the traditional ways? So the Morrigan is a record executive and stuff? How does it work to have some Fae who are just straight-up living in the woods? Eh. It bugs me.
Moreover, I don’t want to even get into the logistics of how the Invitation works and what all is even going on. Like, I get the basic idea—Bo is supposed to be doing the test of herself, whatever she chooses has a varying effect on her, but since she’s not there, the side effects have the possibility of being lethal. But then she’s literally just doing what Trick chooses, like he’s playing a LucasArts game, and then Ballsack’s whole thing WAS the invitation (so they kill a cowboy wannabe dude every time a Fae goes through Fae Puberty?).
I guess more important for our purposes is that this is the “honeymoon is over” episode for Lauren and Bo, but that nothing that happens in it seems organic to their relationship. Tamsin says “Bo, you lie to Lauren all the time,” but she doesn’t. She told her about sleeping with Dyson, for cripes’ sake! And saying “I got tricked by a Spriggan, I have no choice but to help him (or maybe try pushing past him or knocking him out somehow or just asking very nicely if I could help him after a brief delay)” would’ve been just as easy as lying. You could’ve still had Lauren get suspicious—and have Bo be upset that she WAS suspicious—when Bo called drunk.
Also, are they trying to imply that Bo doesn’t care about Lauren’s sciencing? Because it seems like Bo values Lauren’s sciencing a whole lot, given how often it saves her ass. “Here’s a shot, use it to kill the bad guy” comes in a lot handier and easier than “Use magic! Feel emotion! That will definitely maybe work!”
And then Lauren goes off with a dude at the end? I don’t know, the read they seemed to be going for was that she was playing at stepping out on Bo, like in every drama when someone gets stood up by their boo and then decides to go out with someone else attractive instead. But I really thought Lauren was an out-and-out lesbian? I mean, if any show would embrace the “everyone is bi” thing, it’d be this one, but I always thought, you know, Kenzi is straight, Lauren’s gay, God knows what Hale’s into.
Maybe it was just supposed to be Lauren reassuring herself that she’s desirable or something, but I don’t know, they’re going against the weight of TV Tropes to say there’s no attraction whatsoever.
Anyway, room for improvement notes: They could’ve easily made this a bit more specific to the Bolo relationship than just saying “You don’t take my work seriously”/”Honey, I’m sorry I missed your thing.” As I said, Lauren is self-sacrificing and asks for too much of a commitment from Bo. She could’ve gotten upset that Bo is apparently placing herself ahead of her and asking for yet another sacrifice on Lauren’s part, while also being suspicious of Bo and Tamsin’s ovaries. And maybe “the other woman” at the end could’ve been a woman? It at least would’ve made the situation more clear instead of making me think Lauren might be going “hmmm… have I ever REALLY given peen a chance?”
