Alphas season 1
Jan. 13th, 2012 09:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethHave finished watching 11 episodes = season 1 of Alphas.
The we're not who we are ep wasn't very interesting. It pulled threads together nicely but it wasn't much newness. It was good structurally because it reminded all the players and the stakes and what everyone can do right before the big ending.
The final episode ended with a nice scene, I'm just a bit puzzled. Red Flag are political, they have a manifesto and they did that video. How are they not public already? And not all Alphas are red flag. There'd be people trying to win a million with their super abilities and people cooperating with parapsychologists and, you know, range and variety. And unless they're positing the alpha phenomenon is only a USA thing then the rest of the world would have alphas and respond to them in varied ways. I figured they were meant to be few and new, but the longer the season went the more and older the whole thing got. So how does it make any sense that there's a secret to make public? That all the world is secret at once for at the very least fifteen years? I don't think that quite makes sense.
Now the response to the alpha phenomenon, the secret prisons and all, that I can buy as a secret.
And it was good the way they built up his doubts and then had him bring it all into the light.
It's doing murky moral complexity and tough questions.
It's just thus far they've been tough questions solved by shooting people.
I do not like that Anna was killed. Not just because I'm kind of tired of women dying to inspire the guys that liked them. That seems to be the why, Gary liked her so we get to watch him react to her death. I'm very tired of that. But also, it seems to beg the question, miss the point, something like that. Like, a massacre is pretty clearly fucked up, that crosses the line big time. And approaching a meeting assuming its a terrorist cell when you can monitor it and hear a political discussion going on is kind of a mess. Plus the friendly fire incident really drives home that thing where enemy is being defined as a what not a what they do, since all the alphas get attacked, even by what they think is their own side, and only the normal can call off the attack. So that's being really clear, someone's trying to solve the alphas with bullets, and that's a big problem for all alphas.
But the problem to that point has been that they're sending alphas to prison-hospital and only letting them out on work release. Even the team we've been following around, the wonky power relationship gets ever more clearly to be part of the problem. The problem they've set up is slavery. The problem they resolve is murder. And, yeah, that was a problem too, that's another thing they've been doing since the start, but since pretty much everyone agrees that killing people is not a good thing... no, wait, actually the paradigm they've been working with is they call Red Flag a terrorist organisation, and a lot of people seem very keen on killing terrorists. So maybe part of the point was that killing people is still not a good thing when the government does it. Does that need saying? *shivers*
But I still don't like that Anna was killed.
Alphas took almost all the stuff that made me think it was creepy and turned out to actually be meaning to say it's creepy. Which is kind of a relief. And it's doing murky shades of grey stuff. Which I like. And it did shift around on who the bad guy of the day is, so it isn't all crazy people be crazy danger. Just quite a lot. But I think on balance it's doing interesting stuff. I'll watch season 2 when it happens.
I don't think the show or characters will live in my head much when I'm not watching though. Maybe they would have if I'd watched it every week instead of on catch up weekend. I don't know.
The we're not who we are ep wasn't very interesting. It pulled threads together nicely but it wasn't much newness. It was good structurally because it reminded all the players and the stakes and what everyone can do right before the big ending.
The final episode ended with a nice scene, I'm just a bit puzzled. Red Flag are political, they have a manifesto and they did that video. How are they not public already? And not all Alphas are red flag. There'd be people trying to win a million with their super abilities and people cooperating with parapsychologists and, you know, range and variety. And unless they're positing the alpha phenomenon is only a USA thing then the rest of the world would have alphas and respond to them in varied ways. I figured they were meant to be few and new, but the longer the season went the more and older the whole thing got. So how does it make any sense that there's a secret to make public? That all the world is secret at once for at the very least fifteen years? I don't think that quite makes sense.
Now the response to the alpha phenomenon, the secret prisons and all, that I can buy as a secret.
And it was good the way they built up his doubts and then had him bring it all into the light.
It's doing murky moral complexity and tough questions.
It's just thus far they've been tough questions solved by shooting people.
I do not like that Anna was killed. Not just because I'm kind of tired of women dying to inspire the guys that liked them. That seems to be the why, Gary liked her so we get to watch him react to her death. I'm very tired of that. But also, it seems to beg the question, miss the point, something like that. Like, a massacre is pretty clearly fucked up, that crosses the line big time. And approaching a meeting assuming its a terrorist cell when you can monitor it and hear a political discussion going on is kind of a mess. Plus the friendly fire incident really drives home that thing where enemy is being defined as a what not a what they do, since all the alphas get attacked, even by what they think is their own side, and only the normal can call off the attack. So that's being really clear, someone's trying to solve the alphas with bullets, and that's a big problem for all alphas.
But the problem to that point has been that they're sending alphas to prison-hospital and only letting them out on work release. Even the team we've been following around, the wonky power relationship gets ever more clearly to be part of the problem. The problem they've set up is slavery. The problem they resolve is murder. And, yeah, that was a problem too, that's another thing they've been doing since the start, but since pretty much everyone agrees that killing people is not a good thing... no, wait, actually the paradigm they've been working with is they call Red Flag a terrorist organisation, and a lot of people seem very keen on killing terrorists. So maybe part of the point was that killing people is still not a good thing when the government does it. Does that need saying? *shivers*
But I still don't like that Anna was killed.
Alphas took almost all the stuff that made me think it was creepy and turned out to actually be meaning to say it's creepy. Which is kind of a relief. And it's doing murky shades of grey stuff. Which I like. And it did shift around on who the bad guy of the day is, so it isn't all crazy people be crazy danger. Just quite a lot. But I think on balance it's doing interesting stuff. I'll watch season 2 when it happens.
I don't think the show or characters will live in my head much when I'm not watching though. Maybe they would have if I'd watched it every week instead of on catch up weekend. I don't know.
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Date: 2012-01-13 10:29 pm (UTC)I thought Red Flag was known in certain circles, like Rosens bosses, but the general public was for the most part blissfully unaware of Alphas until the finale.