The most wonderful time of the year...
May. 20th, 2012 07:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficIt's that time again. When the dust from season finales has cleared and the fangirling has ended, it's time to decide which finales have earned another year of your DVRing and/or illegal pirating. Let's go, shall we?
Nikita - Easy keep. The show brought certain plotlines to a close at just the right time, before it would've gotten ridiculous to have things keep going around in circles, and launched in a cool new direction that opened up lots of new stories. I would've been satisfied if the series had ended there, even with the loose end of Amanda (honestly, it works for me to have things end with her having gotten a comeuppance, but still living to fight another dayand sex Nikita). The one worry is that Ryan Fletcher's new position is a pretty high-profile one for what's still a bland character. TPTB did a good job retasking his character from (bland) love interest for Nikita, but I'd still be more interested in a new character.
Supernatural - Sell. Okay, Supernatural, I gave you two seasons to wrap things up after Kripke left. I could see not ending things because you didn't want to leave the show on Dean scarred for life (more so than usual, I mean) and Sam in hell. But let's face it, last season was a bust, a lot of build-up to an "evil God" arc that didn't happen, and then this season you promised us Lovecraft. And okay, the Leviathans were... not bad. I actually liked the "human slaughterhouse" angle, even if it did amount to a lot of "get it? Americans are fat and the one percent are evil!" obviousness. (Yes, you had a character actually call them the one percent, WE GET IT. Remember after Obama was elected, when we thought "okay, we have a black President, can we stop with the evil rich white guy villains in every damn thing?"). But this finale was just pathetic. "Oh, you killed the Leviathans' leader, now the unkillable shapeshifters who have completely taken over America are harmless." Really? There isn't a second-in-command? I mean, you spent all season on how the Leviathans were running themselves like a corporation, so wouldn't there be a vice president or a board of directors? And it's become really obvious how crap the budget is. It used to be you could turn a blind eye to it, "oh, Supernatural is doing dragons, will it be just a guy with colored contact lenses YES!" But now you're like, what, is some CW executive using this show to launder drug money? Compare to Nikita, where they'll spend five minutes on an actual fight scene instead of making jokes about boning a nun DURR HURR HURR.
Plus, this is probably the nature of the beast, but they've always been really bad at growing the world of the show. It's not like there are any beloved side characters to keep watching for. Just about every new character that's been introduced has been killed off for the short-term shock value rather than kept for long-term potential, so the only characters who have any room to grow are the Winchesters, and their growth is pretty much just getting sadder and more depressed. Exactly how many episodes have there been with the theme of "a Winchester is bugging out, a guest character tells them to man up and suffer in silence." Yeah, clearly if you have to keep telling them that, the stoicism thing isn't working!
Community - Keep. The actors, at least, have bought enough goodwill for me to give it a chance without Harmon, even if the show ended on such a final, satisfying note that I'm comfortable seeing it as the show having ended and now we're getting a filmed fanfic with the actors reprising their roles. If nothing else, it'll be good to see Troy/Britta and Jeff/Annie get together. But God help them if they try a meta episode about Harmon's exit. That was Dan's thing, you bastards. Don't go there.
30 Rock - Ehhhhhh. Has this show become a chore to get through for anyone else? I actually haven't gotten to the finale yet, I've got a backlog on my DVR. It's just gotten so mean-spirited of late. It's always been cynical, but there used to be a little heart under all that, some... "moralizing" that made it seem like all the cynicism had a point. Now it just seems like everyone is awful all the time. Also, for a "smart-com" (no one has ever called it that, have they?), the plots have gotten oddly... reactionary? Like, I expect Two And A Half Men to have the politics of a caveman, but I thought 30 Rock was more thoughtful.
Remember, there was that weird Sarah Silverman episode? And then this whole thing where Lutz is dating the (female) teacher who molested him as a child? South Park did a similar Mary Kay Letourneau plotline a while back, but they were making a point about how fucked up it is for society to condone female teachers sleeping with male students, not just going "ahaha, so WRONG!" When South Park is more politically correct than you, you're doing something wrong.
And then there's this whole Avery Jessup thing. It's always been a little odd that 30 Rock has these plotlines about Jack romancing women who are half his age (which is fifty. Fifty goddamn years old) and they're played by A-list starlets, when Tina Fey made that famous quote about how aging female comedians can't get work because no one wants to fuck them anymore. Then they have Elizabeth Banks come in playing a female Jack Donaghey, they get married, she has a baby, fine. Whatever. I'm not even a shipper, buuut--
Okay, I get that it's a comedy, they have to keep things fresh, whatever. I'm fine with them taking Avery out of the picture. If they said "oh, a piano dropped on her, she's dead," I'd be cool with that. But did her plot strike anyone else as just.. so... weirdly sadistic? She gets kidnapped by North Korea, tortured, and forced to marry Kim Jong Il's son. Okay. What? Dude, not funny. Not even unfunny-funny. What, if this show were made a few years ago, would there be a joke about her being picked up by Saddam Hussein's sons and raped?
I just can't figure this plotline, and it's freaking me out. They've had other love interests for Jack and Liz, where things didn't work out and they were put on a bus, but no one got it that bad. And I know she's a conservative, but so is Jack, and the show's pretty good-natured to him. They make fun, but they concede he has a point now and then, so is it just that Avery's a woman? Is it some Sarah Palin thing where she's female so she's "supposed" to be a liberal and therefore has to be punished? Hey, I don't want to be asking these questions, but they're the ones who are making a comedy and spent a season implying a character was being raped in North Korea.
Also, what was with that premiere? I know it's been a while, but after those homophobic Tracy Morgan jokes, everyone was wondering how the show would comment on that. And then Tina Fey basically turned around and made an episode about stupid people, all of whom happen to be people she disagrees with. It's like some weird internet argument; "oh, you think Tracy Morgan's bad, what about people who don't believe in global warming?" Sure, that's not great, but we were talking about you. You can't just change the subject like that. You couldn't get away with that on any LJ in fandom.
And I know they're only doing thirteen episodes to wrap things up, but I don't know. The finale'll make it or break it for me. If it's no good, I'll just assume that over the last thirteen episodes, everyone made dick jokes and things just tapered out.
This has been thirteen hundred words about television, clearly the most important thing I could be writing about.
Nikita - Easy keep. The show brought certain plotlines to a close at just the right time, before it would've gotten ridiculous to have things keep going around in circles, and launched in a cool new direction that opened up lots of new stories. I would've been satisfied if the series had ended there, even with the loose end of Amanda (honestly, it works for me to have things end with her having gotten a comeuppance, but still living to fight another day
Supernatural - Sell. Okay, Supernatural, I gave you two seasons to wrap things up after Kripke left. I could see not ending things because you didn't want to leave the show on Dean scarred for life (more so than usual, I mean) and Sam in hell. But let's face it, last season was a bust, a lot of build-up to an "evil God" arc that didn't happen, and then this season you promised us Lovecraft. And okay, the Leviathans were... not bad. I actually liked the "human slaughterhouse" angle, even if it did amount to a lot of "get it? Americans are fat and the one percent are evil!" obviousness. (Yes, you had a character actually call them the one percent, WE GET IT. Remember after Obama was elected, when we thought "okay, we have a black President, can we stop with the evil rich white guy villains in every damn thing?"). But this finale was just pathetic. "Oh, you killed the Leviathans' leader, now the unkillable shapeshifters who have completely taken over America are harmless." Really? There isn't a second-in-command? I mean, you spent all season on how the Leviathans were running themselves like a corporation, so wouldn't there be a vice president or a board of directors? And it's become really obvious how crap the budget is. It used to be you could turn a blind eye to it, "oh, Supernatural is doing dragons, will it be just a guy with colored contact lenses YES!" But now you're like, what, is some CW executive using this show to launder drug money? Compare to Nikita, where they'll spend five minutes on an actual fight scene instead of making jokes about boning a nun DURR HURR HURR.
Plus, this is probably the nature of the beast, but they've always been really bad at growing the world of the show. It's not like there are any beloved side characters to keep watching for. Just about every new character that's been introduced has been killed off for the short-term shock value rather than kept for long-term potential, so the only characters who have any room to grow are the Winchesters, and their growth is pretty much just getting sadder and more depressed. Exactly how many episodes have there been with the theme of "a Winchester is bugging out, a guest character tells them to man up and suffer in silence." Yeah, clearly if you have to keep telling them that, the stoicism thing isn't working!
Community - Keep. The actors, at least, have bought enough goodwill for me to give it a chance without Harmon, even if the show ended on such a final, satisfying note that I'm comfortable seeing it as the show having ended and now we're getting a filmed fanfic with the actors reprising their roles. If nothing else, it'll be good to see Troy/Britta and Jeff/Annie get together. But God help them if they try a meta episode about Harmon's exit. That was Dan's thing, you bastards. Don't go there.
30 Rock - Ehhhhhh. Has this show become a chore to get through for anyone else? I actually haven't gotten to the finale yet, I've got a backlog on my DVR. It's just gotten so mean-spirited of late. It's always been cynical, but there used to be a little heart under all that, some... "moralizing" that made it seem like all the cynicism had a point. Now it just seems like everyone is awful all the time. Also, for a "smart-com" (no one has ever called it that, have they?), the plots have gotten oddly... reactionary? Like, I expect Two And A Half Men to have the politics of a caveman, but I thought 30 Rock was more thoughtful.
Remember, there was that weird Sarah Silverman episode? And then this whole thing where Lutz is dating the (female) teacher who molested him as a child? South Park did a similar Mary Kay Letourneau plotline a while back, but they were making a point about how fucked up it is for society to condone female teachers sleeping with male students, not just going "ahaha, so WRONG!" When South Park is more politically correct than you, you're doing something wrong.
And then there's this whole Avery Jessup thing. It's always been a little odd that 30 Rock has these plotlines about Jack romancing women who are half his age (which is fifty. Fifty goddamn years old) and they're played by A-list starlets, when Tina Fey made that famous quote about how aging female comedians can't get work because no one wants to fuck them anymore. Then they have Elizabeth Banks come in playing a female Jack Donaghey, they get married, she has a baby, fine. Whatever. I'm not even a shipper, buuut--
Okay, I get that it's a comedy, they have to keep things fresh, whatever. I'm fine with them taking Avery out of the picture. If they said "oh, a piano dropped on her, she's dead," I'd be cool with that. But did her plot strike anyone else as just.. so... weirdly sadistic? She gets kidnapped by North Korea, tortured, and forced to marry Kim Jong Il's son. Okay. What? Dude, not funny. Not even unfunny-funny. What, if this show were made a few years ago, would there be a joke about her being picked up by Saddam Hussein's sons and raped?
I just can't figure this plotline, and it's freaking me out. They've had other love interests for Jack and Liz, where things didn't work out and they were put on a bus, but no one got it that bad. And I know she's a conservative, but so is Jack, and the show's pretty good-natured to him. They make fun, but they concede he has a point now and then, so is it just that Avery's a woman? Is it some Sarah Palin thing where she's female so she's "supposed" to be a liberal and therefore has to be punished? Hey, I don't want to be asking these questions, but they're the ones who are making a comedy and spent a season implying a character was being raped in North Korea.
Also, what was with that premiere? I know it's been a while, but after those homophobic Tracy Morgan jokes, everyone was wondering how the show would comment on that. And then Tina Fey basically turned around and made an episode about stupid people, all of whom happen to be people she disagrees with. It's like some weird internet argument; "oh, you think Tracy Morgan's bad, what about people who don't believe in global warming?" Sure, that's not great, but we were talking about you. You can't just change the subject like that. You couldn't get away with that on any LJ in fandom.
And I know they're only doing thirteen episodes to wrap things up, but I don't know. The finale'll make it or break it for me. If it's no good, I'll just assume that over the last thirteen episodes, everyone made dick jokes and things just tapered out.
This has been thirteen hundred words about television, clearly the most important thing I could be writing about.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-05-21 02:56 am (UTC)"It's always been a little odd that 30 Rock has these plotlines about Jack romancing women who are half his age (which is fifty. Fifty goddamn years old) and they're played by A-list starlets, when Tina Fey made that famous quote about how aging female comedians can't get work because no one wants to fuck them anymore"
is actually kind of not accurate.
Wikipedia has a list of all of Donaghy's girlfriends/wives (of course Wikipedia does, bless its OCD heart)
Isabella Rossellini, 59.
Julianne Moore, 51
Edie Falco, 48
Salma Hayek, 45
Of course the ongoing notion that he's been involved with Condeleeza Rice, 57, even if she's not really a character on the show.
Elizabeth Banks and Emily Mortimer, at 38 and 40 are the youngest, but they're both well above any age that Hollywood would reasonably consider them "starlets", and in literal terms, certainly nowhere near half Jack's age. The average is six years younger, which I think is fairly reasonable in real world terms. (Liz Lemon's boyfriends have averaged 1 year younger than her, with 2 being older)
no subject
Date: 2012-05-21 02:58 am (UTC)