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My turn! I finally sat down to watch 3×13 “Smile Like You Mean It.”
GENERAL: Guys.
One of the best episodes of Gotham this season and in the entire series.
No dislikes! Instead a nice list of intense likes:
–Don’t ever get rid of Jerome again, Gotham. It doesn’t do you any favors to pretend like this one time guest star turned phenom isn’t the best part of your show (sorry, Ed. You know I love you)
–“Mayor Crumblepot”
–“Do that disco vampire thing you do with your hair.” This is the most accurate description of Oswald’s hair ever.
–“I’ll just…stay here? If that’s okay? Yeah, that’s okay.”
–“He’s still dead!” “Try turning it on and off” (Dwight and his assistant are like Frankenstein and Igor if Frankenstein and Igor were Abbot and Costello).
–Interesting strategy on the part of Barbara, Tabby, and Ed; using Ed to make Penguin go into full on gangster mode is perfect.
–“Gingers not your type?”
–“I guess I’m just missing one thing, then. Where is my face?”
–Baby!Batman has some nice Future!Batman skills.
–Getting to see how Jerome got his famous Joker scars.
–Jerome’s broadcast.
(Only one episode until April? Booooo)
[adrotate group="5"]"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Snow and Charming writing to each other in between going to back to sleep for this new curse. Hook opening up the storybook and reminding Emma that she comes from true love and that she can conquer anything.
Well I wouldn’t count those two because they are romantic pairings and we’re talking non-romantic pairings. But, again I take your point so let me flesh out the actual criticism.
I think what I’m getting at (I won’t speak for @hjbau) is that the conversations tend to follow one of a few paths:
1) non romantic pairing having super heavy conversation about what is going on with the big bad or expressing the theme of the arc and/or show (hope, family, faith, belief).
2) romantic pairing that discuss either their romance and/or have a super heavy conversation about the big bad or expressing the theme of the arc/show.
3) Group conversations that revolve around the current plot and/or the MacGuffin of the week.
Few of these are character conversations. And if they are, they tend to be almost too weighted down by the current plot dilemma and then never go anywhere after the vignette or scene or episode is done. It’s like…personal revelation for 5 seconds and then, nothing for arcs at a time.
I mean, we don’t get Snow and Emma just sitting around chatting about their hopes, dreams, or anything to do with them their very selves ect (with absolutely nothing coming back to their romantic partners…because that’s a fail of the Bechdel test). For example, Emma going to therapy was rather a genius idea; the girl needs it, badly. But one of the biggest conversations Emma had with Archie wasn’t necessarily about her but rather about Hook losing his happy ending if she dies. EEK! Now, yes, I can accept that any sane person would think about their romantic partner if they suddenly learned they were going to die, but for it be *at the forefront* of the conversation (especially when Emma has about a thousand problems she needs to delve into) that’s…super problematic.
The conversations are becoming rather rote; for example
–Emma has a problem; if she doesn’t turn to Hook automatically (which happens more often than not) she turns to Regina (which always has a bit of a queer baity feel to it). If she doesn’t turn to either of those two and there is no Tragic Female!of the arc (read: the likes of Elsa) THEN she turns to Snow/Charming
–Snow and Charming, if they are lucky to get tagged as Emma’s confidant take on a Greek Chorus vibe—in tandem they offer the same piece of advice every time: have hope, the family will make it because we’ve made it through other stuff, hope, family, hope, family, rinse and repeat. They aren’t characters in these moments so much as non-sentient sounding boards who are pre-programmed to give pre recorded responses.
And here’s the rub: Snow and Charming have good conversations with each other..but that’s the point. That’s a romantic pairing conversation.
The basic problem that lies behind all this criticism is too much plot. An absolute abundance of plot. Our characters are so consumed with plot that there’s no room to breathe. It’s rush around, rush around, defeat, defeat, defeat. And even if there is a nice lull without any monster/big bad, we don’t get to see it (the six weeks in between 4A and 4B, for example!)
I’m not asking for 22 episodes of Snow and Emma braiding each other’s hair and watch the Gilmore Girls. But if we were to scale back on ALL OF THE PLOT then we might find that characters are able to have more meaningful conversations–that last longer and have greater impact than for more than a hot second.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"We’re all getting off the path here. What JMo personally feels–negative or positive–is going to be pretty hard to discern concretely because we are not her and all we have are her soundbites/interviews/podcasts that range from enthusiastic to hoping to take on other projects and everything in between. We also have a lot of assumptions but that’s all they are…assumptions.. We aren’t taking into account the fact that she’s a complex person with probably a variety of opinions on the show, her character, the writing, ect and that we will never know the full extent of her mind no matter what the outcome of S7/her contract is. Actors live by press. She could hate this show with every fiber of her being and she’d still do her due diligence.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Has anyone posted that article about Jennifer Morrision’s contract being up in another thread yet?
I went looking for it but couldn’t find it. I don’t think it was a written Ask Ausellio. He does live FB question/answer sessions so I think it may have been one of those?
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Also, this show does not regularly past the Bechdel test anymore either.
I am more surprised when it does. Actually, I’m sorta floored when it does.
One of the things I miss are those sorts of conversations you pointed out above. A lot of the times, people pair up into romantic twosomes and talk.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"I don’t think it has to be one or the other, exclusively, with JMo.
I think she will see the show out and can speak positively about it (for whatever reason–genuine affection, PR, both of those) AND at the same time…be ready to move on to other ventures, other projects, other creative outlets.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Yeah, Quantico is a serialized drama that has gradually declined in viewership. I don’t expect a miraculously improvement just because it has the Bachelor as its lead-in.
Well….
.8 in the demo and 2.90 live eyeballs.
It’s not…horrible? It’s actually up slightly from it’s winter finale. But the half hours give a scarier look. 1.025 in the first half/ .693 in the second. That’s a pretty steep drop off. Next week might give us a better look.
In other news, TV Grim Reaper is now saying AoS is likely cancelled. We’ve been going back and forth all season about AoS.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"A part of me always wanted to see Isaac return, so I approve.
He was a bit of a dropped ball, so good for them.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"I’m not kidding. If anyone sees that quote from Tip/Ozma on shirt, TELL ME. I want it like I want air.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"People are particularly harder on Hook than anyone else it seems
A lot of this–for me–is just how this forum developed over the years. I don’t really know WHY–maybe because Jenny and Daniel and Jeremy (and later me when I joined the podcast)–were all unabashedly SF–this forum because heavily pro-SF and heavily anti-CS. This place became a bit of refuge for SF fans who felt maligned elsewhere in the fandom and because of that influx, the CSers began to leave as a result. It’s not fair. I’ve never been fully comfortable in the way I couldn’t find a way to balance things or to make it fair to all sides. It used to be a lot more equal around here; I mean, the CS thread was well on its way to 2000 pages at one point. But again, sorta like I said above, at this point there’s really no solution. Everyone is welcome here but you will quickly find that this site has a pretty heft bias (but we’re great with spoilers, theories, and interesting conversation that hopefully outweighs the fact that, in reality, most people around these parts really dislike CS/Hook).
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"
