Being Human
Feb. 6th, 2012 02:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethBlah.
Bechdel fail at 'talk to each other' partly due to Annie being invisible and partly due to the social worker not getting a name.
Two named women were both ghosts. No, wait, all four speaking women in this episode ended up ghosts. What is it with dead women?
Nina got fridged. Killed to motivate a revenge plot from her lover. I'm trying to figure out if it's better or worse than 'died in childbirth', which is actually what I expected just from hearing Annie would be left holding the baby. And then George called her 'my Nina' at the end, which okay, sweet, but. Women existing only in relation to men.
Annie did say she'd lost her lover and her best friend, but there was almost nothing about Annie's reaction to Nina's death, just that one scene, and the whole story structured around George/Nina.
Women don't relate to other women.
And then there's the other house with a vampire, werewolf, and ghost. Two men and a woman again. And you can say it's mirroring the original setup, but the thing with mirrors is they can reverse things, so two women and a man would have worked just as well.
One black man... did he get a name? I don't remember. But he exists in order to die very soon. Dead bro walking. That's... predictable. And boring. And messed up.
Two people of color in total, but they don't talk to each other this week.
And all the randoms are men. Well, randoms that aren't catch of the day victims. Randoms with speaking lines.
Also all the people that get to do anything. Men.
Male vampires get speaking parts, girl probably vampire gets to hold the baby and smile. WTF?
On the plus side the baby is a girl baby this time and they're all going out of their way to save and look after a girl.
On the minus side, girl in distress again.
And, okay, you can fairly say I'm ignoring the plot and the way the characters are supposed to be being really emotional and big tearful goodbye times.
But if this stuff is all I can notice then it gets increasingly difficult to give a damn.
Blame many years of cultural studies if you want.
Feel free to ignore it.
But this is a story about men doing things and women getting upset about it and getting dead a lot. More than men, because there were surviving men but the only surviving female was the baby.
Actually, I assumed from the first scene that the 2037 girl was the baby all grown up. Was that stated or just implied or in my head? I'd look again but I didn't record it. And then we get more scenes where people were honoured to meet her when she was just a kid and she has the first two parts of the prophecy which were left with Annie and then she gets the third part of the prophecy and gets someone to kill her so she can go save the world. By killing the baby. And the vampire that knew the prophecy was keeping the baby alive. Conclusion: Baby's death is what saves the world, baby survival is what leads to the 2037 we saw.
The flashforwards are a game changer and I didn't like them.
You remember when it was about three people just trying to be human while feeling like they were disqualified? Addiction and anger management and agoraphobia were the enemies. I don't know how much it was like that, but that was what I noticed about it first. It's sort of not the same show now. It's a lot more like every other vampire story.
Big open warfare and prophecy and the end of the world, it's a bit been there done that. Also it makes no sense for the vampires to launch a war of annihilation. Never has never will. Closest it gets is anywhere with artificial blood, but really, kill all the humans, as well as starving you wreck the world, be king of dust and ashes, and do your own laundry. Who wants that? And the dude making jokes about the twitter army was right. The world's too organised to just bite your way to victory now. His next move will involve putting werewolf footage on youtube and then the world will turn against werewolves and vampire will get good PR. But why do they need to when they already control the police, own swish houses, and have hot and cold running blood? War isn't the scary problem with vampires, not the one you can only tell with vampires, once it gets to open conflict everyone can see there's a problem, the real scare with vampires is the sneaky draining evil of the bad system or the bad boyfriend.
So, blah.
Everything's blah lately.
Possibly it's me then.
Bechdel fail at 'talk to each other' partly due to Annie being invisible and partly due to the social worker not getting a name.
Two named women were both ghosts. No, wait, all four speaking women in this episode ended up ghosts. What is it with dead women?
Nina got fridged. Killed to motivate a revenge plot from her lover. I'm trying to figure out if it's better or worse than 'died in childbirth', which is actually what I expected just from hearing Annie would be left holding the baby. And then George called her 'my Nina' at the end, which okay, sweet, but. Women existing only in relation to men.
Annie did say she'd lost her lover and her best friend, but there was almost nothing about Annie's reaction to Nina's death, just that one scene, and the whole story structured around George/Nina.
Women don't relate to other women.
And then there's the other house with a vampire, werewolf, and ghost. Two men and a woman again. And you can say it's mirroring the original setup, but the thing with mirrors is they can reverse things, so two women and a man would have worked just as well.
One black man... did he get a name? I don't remember. But he exists in order to die very soon. Dead bro walking. That's... predictable. And boring. And messed up.
Two people of color in total, but they don't talk to each other this week.
And all the randoms are men. Well, randoms that aren't catch of the day victims. Randoms with speaking lines.
Also all the people that get to do anything. Men.
Male vampires get speaking parts, girl probably vampire gets to hold the baby and smile. WTF?
On the plus side the baby is a girl baby this time and they're all going out of their way to save and look after a girl.
On the minus side, girl in distress again.
And, okay, you can fairly say I'm ignoring the plot and the way the characters are supposed to be being really emotional and big tearful goodbye times.
But if this stuff is all I can notice then it gets increasingly difficult to give a damn.
Blame many years of cultural studies if you want.
Feel free to ignore it.
But this is a story about men doing things and women getting upset about it and getting dead a lot. More than men, because there were surviving men but the only surviving female was the baby.
Actually, I assumed from the first scene that the 2037 girl was the baby all grown up. Was that stated or just implied or in my head? I'd look again but I didn't record it. And then we get more scenes where people were honoured to meet her when she was just a kid and she has the first two parts of the prophecy which were left with Annie and then she gets the third part of the prophecy and gets someone to kill her so she can go save the world. By killing the baby. And the vampire that knew the prophecy was keeping the baby alive. Conclusion: Baby's death is what saves the world, baby survival is what leads to the 2037 we saw.
The flashforwards are a game changer and I didn't like them.
You remember when it was about three people just trying to be human while feeling like they were disqualified? Addiction and anger management and agoraphobia were the enemies. I don't know how much it was like that, but that was what I noticed about it first. It's sort of not the same show now. It's a lot more like every other vampire story.
Big open warfare and prophecy and the end of the world, it's a bit been there done that. Also it makes no sense for the vampires to launch a war of annihilation. Never has never will. Closest it gets is anywhere with artificial blood, but really, kill all the humans, as well as starving you wreck the world, be king of dust and ashes, and do your own laundry. Who wants that? And the dude making jokes about the twitter army was right. The world's too organised to just bite your way to victory now. His next move will involve putting werewolf footage on youtube and then the world will turn against werewolves and vampire will get good PR. But why do they need to when they already control the police, own swish houses, and have hot and cold running blood? War isn't the scary problem with vampires, not the one you can only tell with vampires, once it gets to open conflict everyone can see there's a problem, the real scare with vampires is the sneaky draining evil of the bad system or the bad boyfriend.
So, blah.
Everything's blah lately.
Possibly it's me then.