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Apr. 12th, 2015 02:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI have decided I like MacGyver for the same reason I leave the TV on the comedy/plays radio channel when I turn it off, because it's pretty much inoffensive and won't make me jump or anything when I turn it back on (unlike that one time with the Horror Channel, which has quite different things on it in daytimes).
I have been having lunch and watching an episode, and they are usually a bit fun, if I can turn off the part of my brain that notices they never (ever) have more than one woman for more than two sentences. The one and only episode that passed the Bechdel test did so because one woman was about to kill the other and take her identity. The episode I just finished watching had none women, because the 'woman' turned out to be a 'master of disguise' assassin. It's freaky weird. Plus there's seldom people of colour, and when there are they tend to get dead and/or be evil.
... every time I sit down to say 'MacGyver: actually not that bad' then that paragraph there is what falls out. Because actually bad, measured by any metrics other than what happens to straight white guys. And yet it's such an ordinary sort of offensive I can just ignore it and have a lunch and watch something vaguely clever happen with a happy ending.
Also the writing is 80s enough I can see how it works. They just brought a character back from the dead by having an entire episode about how if you don't see the body they're probably not dead, so then the guy turns up right at the end and you realise they didn't kill him off by the newly established standard. Like they had to establish a standard? No body, no dead, simples. Except I guess we don't actually see dead people on this show, like, ever, they just fall out of shot.
... the one and only vaguely competent evil woman defeated herself by jumping out of a window. She was trying to kick Mac, but still, that's some epic level self defeating. Because he couldn't hit a woman to win so she had to beat herself?
I miss the little opening sequences where Mac does something really clever yet unrelated to the actual episode. I miss them for the same reason they're gone, I reckon: they were a five minute concentrated sequence of clever bits, and that's usually as many clever bits as in a whole episode. So they were using up their clever at double speed until they got rid of them. Oh well.
The clever bits are the hardest parts. Like, already there are times when you don't quite see why he needed to be clever right then, like it would have worked just as well without the cunning plan. Also, almost all situations are solved by improvising explosives from household objects. It is amazing how many things can be made better by making bits of car go boom.
Basically, Mac is pretty (as I have always known), science is pretty, and I can ignore the annoying things because they're history. It's kind of like liking it, but more empty.
Probably I should pick a show I actually like and watch an episode a day of that?
:eyeroll:
I have been having lunch and watching an episode, and they are usually a bit fun, if I can turn off the part of my brain that notices they never (ever) have more than one woman for more than two sentences. The one and only episode that passed the Bechdel test did so because one woman was about to kill the other and take her identity. The episode I just finished watching had none women, because the 'woman' turned out to be a 'master of disguise' assassin. It's freaky weird. Plus there's seldom people of colour, and when there are they tend to get dead and/or be evil.
... every time I sit down to say 'MacGyver: actually not that bad' then that paragraph there is what falls out. Because actually bad, measured by any metrics other than what happens to straight white guys. And yet it's such an ordinary sort of offensive I can just ignore it and have a lunch and watch something vaguely clever happen with a happy ending.
Also the writing is 80s enough I can see how it works. They just brought a character back from the dead by having an entire episode about how if you don't see the body they're probably not dead, so then the guy turns up right at the end and you realise they didn't kill him off by the newly established standard. Like they had to establish a standard? No body, no dead, simples. Except I guess we don't actually see dead people on this show, like, ever, they just fall out of shot.
... the one and only vaguely competent evil woman defeated herself by jumping out of a window. She was trying to kick Mac, but still, that's some epic level self defeating. Because he couldn't hit a woman to win so she had to beat herself?
I miss the little opening sequences where Mac does something really clever yet unrelated to the actual episode. I miss them for the same reason they're gone, I reckon: they were a five minute concentrated sequence of clever bits, and that's usually as many clever bits as in a whole episode. So they were using up their clever at double speed until they got rid of them. Oh well.
The clever bits are the hardest parts. Like, already there are times when you don't quite see why he needed to be clever right then, like it would have worked just as well without the cunning plan. Also, almost all situations are solved by improvising explosives from household objects. It is amazing how many things can be made better by making bits of car go boom.
Basically, Mac is pretty (as I have always known), science is pretty, and I can ignore the annoying things because they're history. It's kind of like liking it, but more empty.
Probably I should pick a show I actually like and watch an episode a day of that?
:eyeroll: