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AudienceofOne

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Everything posted by AudienceofOne

  1. Well, here we are! Season 2. Pours wine. Pours more wine. Boy, show isn't less angsty and overwrought this season is it? The alien organs are made of organic technology! While the pedant in me took issue with this revelation (our organs are organic technology too, you know. Our body engineers them out of stem cells so they're fit for purpose), I kind of got what they meant. At some point the aliens must have used their organic technology to replace the organs. It doesn't make them more or less able to 'fixed' though. I really like this explainer of Michael's behaviour, I just wish they'd had anything in the text to indicate it. He seemed to be just Michael level of self-destructive. But I am glad the writer took some time out to explain why he spent the whole of the last episode realising how much he loved Alex only to hook up with Maria. But losing one of the few family members he has would no doubt put him into a spiral about how everyone leaves. I think his character might be the only one that makes sense. Other thoughts: Nathan Dean's acting has not improved over the break. After Liz's "Old white men keep stopping me from doing unethical research on humans" speech, I see she hasn't improved as a scientist either.
  2. And... that's it for season 1. It's over. Did I kind of enjoy it in all its ridiculous, badly-written, badly-acted glory? Umm... yes. As a binge watch it was brainless fun. I still wish it had managed to fulfil the promise it seemed to be making as a discussion of immigration and refugees. Or maybe I just wish it had been more tightly written with better characterisation and more time to let characters breathe and interact with each other. The shallow interactions, the angsty plot-related discourse, the flip flopping everyone did all the time. In the end I just decided to laugh and move on. If I was a viewer who was really invested in the show I would imagine I'd be quite annoyed. I mean, I still have no clue who Max is, who he's supposed to be or why he does anything he does. He's so badly characterised and so badly acted. And did Michael spend the entire episode talking about how much he loved Alex and how he didn't even care about his family's role in hunting aliens and how he wanted the courage to be happy... and then go hook up with Maria instead? What the hell even is that? Poor Maria. So as I wind up season 1 I look back on all I have learnt and I can say: 1. Michael is the sexiest ET cowboy ever 2. Liz is the worst scientist ever Farewell.
  3. He's one of four according to some piece of exposition early on. All decorated military too according to that same piece of exposition. Oh God, these shows always make the same damn mistake. They cast the core characters from the bright white YA source and then they decide to be "progressive" by surrounding them with POC characters or gay characters. But those characters are the ones that die or get tortured or turn into crazed stalkers or are secretly evil. And suddenly all your gays are dead and your POCs are villains and they're left wondering how it happened. As a purely casual viewer who bingewatched this show and is now commenting assiduously on all the recaps like a crazy person, I have zero interest in a ship war. ZERO. And so I have avoided saying what I'm about to say. I completely agree with you. I feel like Michael and Maria have some shallow, casual flirty thing going on and that Michael is in love with Alex and will always be in love with Alex. And I don't think it's fair to a character - whether their relationship is canon or otherwise - to be the safe choice someone clings to because the relationship with the person they really love has just gotten too complicated. And that's what I see here. I see way more genuine complicated chemistry, attraction, romance and feelings between Malex than whatever Maria and Michael's ship name is. And in the real world, Maria would get very badly hurt by what is inevitably going to go down. One episode I remember really liking from the original TV show (and I know this is true because it's almost the only episode I actually remember) is one where this alien hunter takes Max into the desert because he's convinced he's this ageless alien serial killer. And Valenti comes out and stops him from hurting Max and Max turns on him and says, "Why are you doing this to me, I'm just a kid". And Valenti has this moment of realisation that this is a kid. Whether he's an alien or not, he's still just a kid. And the whole sense of menace just flips in a heart beat because the endless grinding terror of this sheriff harassing them was destroying them. And this show has none of that. For a show that's supposed to be about refugees and spending your life in fear of the people and the society around you all the time, none of that unrelenting low-level fear is present. And it's a real shame because that fear should define these people. The only person it seems to define is Liz and it's weird, like she's supposed to be the only immigrant in a show about alien immigrants.
  4. And this is why I didn't see him as the 4th alien. Because you don't show a character behaving a certain way in private when nobody else is around and then tell me he's the bad guy later on. Oh God, this. I don't even know who these people are or how they're going to respond to anything because they change on a dime or are in polar opposition to their previously-stated opinion on something within five minutes. The exceptions are Alex, Isabel and possibly Maria (although that could be a screentime thing). I don't know why the show didn't just make Liz a witch because her running back home to consult her magic book and do a spell would actually be more realistic than her ridiculous Insta!Science.
  5. And it's an antidote and they keep calling it an antidote. An antidote negates the effect of something. You can't negate the effect of something MORE. For a show that seems determined to ground itself in science it's almost anti-science in the way it portrays Liz's work. I feel like this show is trying to show people being 'mature' in their relationships, accepting others for who they are and simply expanding their universes to include them when they find out. The problem is that it makes these relationships seem shallow. If you don't care that your best friend is an alien who has been lying to you your entire life - is it because you're being mature and accepting, or is it because they're just not that important to you? Not one person has sat down Max or Michael or Isobel and asked them for their life experiences or how they feel about the world they live in. What do you know? What do you remember? How do you feel? Not a single one. Because everyone seems to just slide through their relationships with people jumping from shallow interaction to shallow interaction. So someone can declare their love for one person and have sex with someone else in the next scene and we're supposed to disconnect these two things from genuine human feelings. There are some exceptions - Alex seems to demand more of people and ask more questions and think about whether he did the right or wrong thing in a situation. But everyone else is basically, "Oh sure you're an alien refugee but I have a spin class to get to. Let's grab a beer next time I can fit you in. Or sex if I feel like it, either/or." For the record I have huge problems with Max having sex with his partner. It's hugely unethical and I don't like how he was openly pursuing Liz while having sex with someone else. It wasn't fair to either person. Also I have no idea how that fits in with his character. I have no idea who Max is and the bad acting isn't helping. This show insists on portraying sex in a certain way: something you can separate out from your emotions and that it's fine in all circumstances as long as the people involved are consenting adults and are honest about it. And there are time when I'm grateful for it and times where I feel they are portraying a more mature attitude towards sex. The childish jealousy you see in a lot of romance shows and its associated possessiveness, controlling and stalking is horrible and I'm glad this doesn't have that. But there are other situations - like Max sleeping with his work partner, Liz having sex with Kyle and then pretending it never happened, and Michael not seeming to care about Maria and Alex's friendship - where I have a huge problem with it. People generally don't work this way. There's no way that Kyle or Cameron don't feel used or Alex doesn't feel hurt. Now all three of those people may understand they have no basis to be publicly hurt or to act badly because of it. But most people would feel it. And this goes back to how I feel like all these relationships are shallow. It's like they just float from encounter to encounter and then bug out when things get complicated. It's not mature at all. It's actually self-destructive over the long term.
  6. Oh me too, this is my era. But as much as I love the soundtrack personally, sometimes a song will play and I'll go 'whaaa' because I can't work out what the choice says about the scene or the characters or the plot or the context. It's like a deliberate musical ode to something that has no relevance to anything else about the show.
  7. I'm the opposite, I think Alex/Michael is the best ship in the show and that Maria/Michael should be just a really good friendship. If they end up together, I will not believe that he loves her more than he loves Alex. I just won't. Also it's nice that Michael actually talks to Maria because this show is so much like a damn soap that nobody has proper conversations with each other. Everyone just stands around looking angsty and delivering plot-pertinent dialogue at each other. One true friendship would be good. This is me as well. I feel like Alex and Michael also have the kind of epic tortured romance that YA relationships are supposed to have. Michael and Maria have a light flirtation that could possibly be more I guess but I don't see it rivalling his feelings for Alex. I mean this could change if Michael starts turning on his sex eyes and doing his cowboy poses. But for now I don't see it at all.
  8. She so genius she don't even have to science her science. It sciences itself! More importantly, she don't even need to do no ethics. In an episode about how Maria's mother was experimented on by the US military and an episode that gave a nod to Henrietta Lacks around that issue, experimenting on aliens without their knowledge and consent was unbelievably tone deaf. Bearing in mind she got those samples under false pretenses when she was secretly trying to prove Max murdered her sister. What the hell do they think they're doing with this character? But the thing that really annoyed me about this episode is that characters flip flop between scenes for reasons I don't understand. It's like the writer wants two characters to have a particular argument and so they have it even if one character is now in polar opposition to their position on the issue only a few minutes ago. It's just bad writing. So Liz and Max argue about Isabel and then two minutes later Liz has the same argument with Isabel but now she's on the other side of the argument. Max and Michael argue about family or the mind swipe or something something and then five minutes later their positions are reversed. I realise it's a problem with the show generally.
  9. None of this makes sense. I have so many questions. This has been bothering me since the letter reveal since apparently she came out drunk and confronted Max about the letter but then didn't go out and instead hid the letter but somehow still ended up being murdered that same night? I'm assuming that Isobel (or whoever was in Isobel) murdered the two girls as payback for them bullying Rosa and the Rosa found out and confronted her? Or something? Why was Rosa even there? It makes little sense to me and considering this show's slipshod attention to detail I hold out no hope they'll ever really explain it. I was so confused through that whole thing. Why is Maria Rosa's best friend when Maria was in Liz's class? And then Rosa was at the school? I spent half the episode wondering if Liz and Rosa were actually the same age but then they said Rosa was 19? None of it makes sense. "I thought these two highschool students were my friends but it turns out I'm just their drug dealer". Were there no people Rosa's age in Roswell? Judging from your other comments you'll probably think differently but this is why the Alex/Michael love story resonates way more with me. They had a real teen relationship going complete with lust and attraction and a genuinely traumatic incident that pulled them apart. I have no idea why YA shows always put their effort into the second romances rather than the main ones. Max and Liz talked once? Wow, that separation was tragic. This. The whole show. I never know why people are doing something or what happened offscreen or who knows what. Sloppy sloppy. Sloppy.
  10. Alex and Kyle are the best. Let's make it all about them. Oh is THAT what that creepy sex bunker was for. I couldn't get over it looking so much like a creepy sex bunker and I couldn't help thinking that just because he wasn't having sex with a troubled drugged out teen in the sex bunker didn't make it less like a sex bunker. There's no way he just put that together for her. It's clearly his sex bunker. I can't work out what it is they're going for with Liz. She's a pretty bad friend, unethical, jumps to conclusions, she's a bad scientist. Liz is a bulldozer. I guess it's better than being a pot plant but surely they could have had an intelligent, confident and forthright woman without her being such a bulldozer. I'd be fine if I thought they were trying to make her unlikable deliberately as a deliberate statement on how female characters are always supposed to be pure and full of justice but I don't feel it is deliberate. I think we're supposed to sympathise with her. I find it hard to.
  11. So I have a big problem with this. A big one. Just ignoring the fact I don't believe that any of these three actually killed Rosa, this show started with a big red banner up saying "This show is about refugees and immigration and is squarely placed in an ICE world" and it's one of the reasons I persisted despite the things I don't like about it. But so far Max IS a killer and he blacked out the city and so is whoever killed Rosa. How is this not undermining the show's themes? Maybe it'll get back on track but all this alien twu wuv stuff is detracting from what I thought the reboot was going to be about. Worst. Scientist. Ever.
  12. The writing on this show is terrible but for some reason I can't stop watching it. Maybe I was just in the mood for a classic mid-90s YA story transplanted forward to sex-positive adults. It doesn't change the fact that I'm regularly confused as to why various characters do what they do. I'm all for "will they turn evil" fakeouts but not every single damn character. I mean... have you read YA? But from the TV series that I'm trying not to mention I got the idea the aliens were prone to intense emotional fixations. They were always madly in love pretty quickly and Isabelle even got married in ten seconds at one point. Both Max and Michael in this seem to be 100% all in on one person since highschool despite a decade away. Although in Michael's case I feel the angsty romance of it more fully since he and Alex were actually together and had some serious unresolved issues when Alex left town. I can't believe I'm going to say it but I would probably read it. I guess by aging them up they're attempting to overcome the structural issues with why teen Max and teen Liz were never going to make it. But they haven't really made it work.
  13. I'm all for being sex positive but this is a serious workplace ethics issue. I hate that he's banging his partner. It's unprofessional. If I can stop pretending I didn't watch the whole season before dropping by here, they do this a LOT throughout the season in a way that is a deliberate nod to Lone Cowboy tropes and it's one of the moments where the show rocks. I wish the whole thing could be this subtle and self-aware. They make such a big deal about Liz being a scientist but what scientist rushes to judgement with such sparse evidence? And not just that but sells Max out to various people without blinking ten seconds after being outraged at the accusation that she wouldn't keep the secret. I do not like her at all, just for this behaviour alone. This. Liz is the worst scientist in the universe and I say that having seen the whole season. She's also judgmental and uses people. Which would be fine but I feel like this is not supposed to be her characterisation, it's just that the writers use her conclusion-jumping to drive conflict when it's not necessary.
  14. I thought they did a good job of showing that these two haven't seen each for a while but still cannot keep their hands off each other. But the whole thing was rushed in multiple places meaning that it's not entirely why people did a lot of things.
  15. I'm a billion years late but wth, it was a rainy weekend here and I decided to pick this up. Honestly Max is badly miscast and his acting is TERRIBLE. In retrospect Jason Behr's interpretation of the character wasn't as bad as I thought it was at the time. However wooden he was at times, to me I still believed he was this angsty outsider struggling with powers outside of his control and trying to reconcile his feelings for Liz with the demands of keeping everyone safe. This Max just does not work for me at all. I really like what they did with Alex and Michael but couldn't work out who Maria was supposed to be at all at first.
  16. City of Light anyone? I thought that overriding people's free will to force them into a collective was supposed to be a bad thing - at least three seasons ago it was.
  17. SG1 may have been an anthology show but I disagree that its mythology and worldbuilding came later. There was a lot in there about the rules of the Stargate, the Goa'uld, the Jaffa. There are 'micro' and 'macro' levels to a show. On a macro level anything can be handwaved as long as the micro level is meticulous. If it isn't, then that's when your suspension of disbelief crumbles. So we can easily accept that e.g. we found a magic ring in the sands of Egypt that can transport us to other planets in our galaxy along a network that was built by parasitic aliens who took human hosts as slaves - as long as the rules relating to those aliens and using that ring are clear and consistent. Which for Stargate SG1 was one of that show's greatest strengths. Copy and paste that onto a different show and it just looks ridiculous. It's true that ascension came later but that was well-developed. SG1 canvassed religious themes but it never veered nonsensically into religiosity like The 100 often did. And this ending was the worst example of that. Humanity went to heaven because Clarke sacrificed herself for our sins. Except she kind of didn't and her comment that she bore it so they didn't have to made zero sense in this context. Why was she the receptacle of humanity's sin?
  18. It doesn't matter how ridiculous your mythology is as long as it's internally consistent. I mean they ripped everything else from Stargate but they left behind the one thing that made SG1 a great show - its strict adherence to its own internal laws.
  19. At this point I'm just glad the whole thing is over and I can put it behind me and never have to find myself watching another new season of The 100 and wondering why when it's been a bad fall downhill since Season 3. But if I can take a moment to gripe a little, this episode just MADE NO SENSE. So Cardigan finally found his aliens (what was it btw that Becca saw that freaked her out so much?) Clarke came along and killed him and then the aliens said, "sorry the test has already begun, the whole of humanity is being judged". This despite the fact that humanity clearly didn't want to 'transcend' (sorry that is so stupid, I can't even type it without laughing). And then the test involves them looking at the person in front of them - somebody that humanity did not choose and who clearly didn't want the test - and then going, "nah, you're not good enough on account of all the genocide so now we're going to commit genocide". Clarke says, "Sure I'm not worthy so just kill me and let the other ones live" and the aliens basically say that it's not a choice and it's all or nothing. The whole of humanity 'transcends' or the whole of humanity dies. And then after they change their mind and 'transcend' them, Clarke is excluded despite them literally saying that it was all or nothing. And then a bunch of Clarke's friends decide they'd rather live out their human lives and die and Clarke says, "You mean 'transcendence' is a choice? And Lexa alien says, "Of course", despite the entire episode being structured around the idea that IT'S NOT A CHOICE. I mean be badly written, kill characters off because your showrunner chucked a tantrum, sacrifice your show for the potential of a trashy prequel, and destroy all your own mythology, but at least make it internally consistent within episodes.
  20. That's seven years of my life I'll never get back. This was a show that existed and that I watched
  21. I mean they're doing this thing this season where they're contrasting the philosophies of "the personal matters" vs "the group matters" and Clarke and Friends represent the Personal and Cardigan and Idiots represent the Group. And on paper that's a perfectly fine thing except that Clarke in particular was a far more nuanced character than that and frequently struggled with that same quandary. In fact you could say that Clarke=the group and Bellamy=the personal was a framing of the original seasons. Except now we have this ridiculous thing where Clarke just runs around behaving like a crazy Madi bot and Bellamy is dead. I think I had a point I was making here. Oh yeah! This show sucks. That's where all my points end up. THIS. I agree with everyone's comments but actually this was a well-written episode if it was in a vacuum. It is not in a vacuum. And now I'm just happy my pain is nearly at an end. One more episode!!
  22. Honestly, Eliza at this point has checked out completely and can barely even muster an emotional response to anything. Her character makes no sense anymore and she knows it. She and Bob must be counting the days until they can gtfo of this fustercluck and never look back.
  23. "I killed Bellamy over a book - and then left a book. I'm sorry if you, his sister and his girlfriend, now hate me" "Meh, we were kind of over him. Let's hug" Like I get this was a bottle episode but watching Clarke and Octavia run around a bunker yelling, "Maddie!!!! Maddie!!!" for half an hour while SlimSheidy just followed them around smirking was not quality television, you guys. This show is just so unbelievably pointless in every way. And this episode's "Earth's totally fine so the last two seasons didn't even matter!!" was the craptastic closer. I'm just so relieved it's about to put me out of my misery once and for all. CANCELLATION PARTY 🥳
  24. The minute they did it to Ricky Whittle we should have stopped watching. It's really our fault for sticking around this long. Rothenberg is such a pissy little bitch - and yes I hate myself for using a gendered insult but that's all I got. Rothenberg bringing back an actor he's decided he doesn't like just to force his wife to murder him for no reason. They say that you can tell how the production staff feel about an actor by how they kill them on screen and in this case they benched him, gave him a lobotomy and then had his wife shoot him over a book and then *leave the book*. God this is so unbelievably shit. If I didn't have only three episodes left I'd be out of here. This is a really good point. There's so much stuff here that characters are just handwaving. What also annoys me is that they devoted a really long time in one episode to Jordan's "OMG this language is like Korean, the Shepherd's translation is wrong" and NOT ONE SINGLE PERSON HAS SAID THIS TO HIM OR BELLAMY OR EVEN TO EACH OTHER. No one, not even in passing. "Oh sure, transcendence whatever, you know there's no 'war' right?" That might be better than pissy little bitch. More importantly than that, Clarke and Bellamy are the thematic core of the show. They were the head and the heart in more than just name, they were the way to examine different aspects of social governance and responding to conflict. And it's true that the writers had fucked that up from at least season 6 (and possibly before that) but it doesn't change that the show without Bellamy has no heart just like the show without Clarke has no head. And that's why this season has been so tedious.
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