S01.E01: Bangarang

[Wynterwolf]

I love absolutely everything about the show... except the older brother.  And it felt like he was practically in every scene (I know he wasn't, but it felt like that) and that really threw off the flow of the whole episode for me.  There was so much good stuff, and Hannah as Dutch is fantastic, but all I can focus on is how much I was annoyed every time the older brother showed up.  But it is just the pilot, so I'm definitely willing to see how it goes.  

[Adira]

I didn't LOVE the first episode, and I got kind of confused with all the jumping from one place to another, but I'll definitely keep giving it a try.  Thought the storyline with Dutch and her teacher/father was intriguing.  Wasn't a fan of D'Avin or his relationship with Johnny, so we'll see.

[DearEvette]

I liked him a lot. I also really enjoyed the lady that gives Dutch the info on her mission, Fancy, and Dutch's mysterious old mentor (Roan!). Actually, I think overall the show is really well-cast. The only weak-link is the older brother.

 

I just rewatched the episode too and he reminds me of a cross between Ward and Brendan Fehr. No bueno.

 

Yup.  I think the casting is a large part of what makes the show work for me.  Not only is there good racial diversity,  but if I am reading between the lines of the interview Mcfarlane did, they are also doing something interesting with attitudes re: sexuality.  

 

Also everyone is ridiculously attractive.  The actor who plays Fancy under that hair/beard is seriously smokin'.  I hope he hangs around.

 

Now my biggest hope is we get a little more gender parity.  So far Dutch and her RAC handler? are the only women.  A couple  more recurring would be great.

 

Also, I like D'Avin.  I have no triggers he's tripping... so he works for me too.

Edited June 22, 2015 by DearEvette

[nobodyyoucare]

 

I am reading between the lines of the interview Mcfarlane did, they are also doing something interesting with attitudes re: sexuality.

Not really. For a long time spies would often cross dress if they could pull it off. Also they would often pretend to be interested in the other sex or same sex to do a honey trap.

 

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevalier_d'Eonis one such spy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shi_Pei_Pu

[Whimsy]

I really liked this.  I thought for sure I was going to come here and everyone was going to be bashing it, so I am very happy to see others enjoyed this too.  I don’t have much more to add- love Dutch and Johnny, not loving D’Avin.  I’m kind of shipping Johnny and Dutch but think the writers are already broadcasting a Dutch/D’Avin hook-up.  This will be a great summer show.

[Danny Franks]

So it seems like the general opinion (using this forum as a possibly skewed microcosm) is that the older brother didn't work. Wonder if the showrunners got that from any previews or from post-episode feedback, and whether they'll try to address it by tweaking the character.

 

I always find it interesting when the majority of an audience reacts in a way that wasn't intended by the writers, and whether the writers try to understand why and fix it, or whether they double down on their original idea and try to force it to work.

[cynic]

I hate when TPTB double down on characters that aren't working, for example, Sleepy Hollow expanding Katrina's role before finally throwing in the towel when viewers really revolted. On the other hand, Revolution smartly deemphasized Charlie, but that show had numerous other problems. I'm not saying that the writers should be beholden to audience reactions, but if the vast majority of the audience thinks something's not working, you might want to consider that it's possibly not working. Usually the negative reaction to a character is way more reliable than the flipside too. Increasing a character's role because of the fandom is generally more problematic, because what works in small doses, may not work in large ones.

...

Also everyone is ridiculously attractive. The actor who plays Fancy under that hair/beard is seriously smokin'. I hope he hangs around.

...

The hair/beard were seriously working for me.

[DearEvette]

Not really. For a long time spies would often cross dress if they could pull it off. Also they would often pretend to be interested in the other sex or same sex to do a honey trap.

 

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevalier_d'Eonis one such spy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shi_Pei_Pu

 

 

I was thinking in broader world-view terms and what a genre sci-fi show would try to deliver to a viewing audience.  This quote in particular made me wonder:

 

I don’t think he’s gay in any way but I don’t think it would be above him or like anybody in the world to have sex with somebody of the same sex if it was going to get them something that they needed. It’s a very transactional world in that sense.

 

 

It seems like what he's hinting at is that sex isn't necessarily thought of as something inherently connected to your orientation, but rather something you do with whomever as needed. Instead of this being just the purview of spies, is a total worldview for this time/place/setting.  If this were the case that ideology would be rather progressive for a tv show.  I've seen it in actual written SFF books, but not sure if I have seen it on tv shows.

 

Since people have brought up Firefly in comparison to this show, one of the things that bugged me so completely with Firefly was Mal's attitude wrt to Inara's role as a Companion.  Supposedly a Companion was a fairly prestigious job, analogous to a diplomat, but Mal continued to think of Inara as a whore.  In a science fiction/fantasy show you have the opportunity to create your own social paradigm, build your own world system.  You don't have to use current world ideas or morality as a measure.   I just thought it was a missed opportunity for Firefly to view  the idea sex work as an actual profession, divorced from moral judgement and that  the concept of 'whore' would be totally alien to those people.

Edited June 22, 2015 by DearEvette

[maczero]

Anytime I see Aaron Ashmore, I first go "Oh, the Ashmore twin who wasn't Iceman."  Then I go "Well, at least he wasn't in The Following, so he's got that going for him."  But he was fun here, I thought.  

How do you tell them apart?  I had heard one is starting to age badly (heavier, losing hair).  Is that Shawn?

 

I gotta say I wasn't too impressed by this.  None of the leads really interested me.  Dutch is kinda hot but that's not enough to keep me tuning in every week.  Really wish this show was the first in the SyFy Friday night block.  As it stands now, I'll have to watch something else between Defiance and Dark Matter.

[Dot Com]

How do you tell them apart? I had heard one is starting to age badly (heavier, losing hair). Is that Shawn?.

I wouldn't say that either of them is aging badly. Aaron tends to keep his hair short. It was short when he did "Warehouse 13". So if you see a picture of the two of them together and one has a buzz cut then that would be Aaron. I Think he might have been a bit heavier for awhile.

Right now though on this show Aaron's hair is longer. So I personally can't tell "The Following" Shawn Ashmore and "Killjoys" Aaron Ashmore apart. I know that one is a touch taller. They both have the same tattoo on their wrist area so that doesn't help. Up until "The Following" it was more Movie = Shawn and TV = Aaron. Not so much anymore.

Edited June 22, 2015 by Dot Com

[thuganomics85]

 

 

How do you tell them apart? I had heard one is starting to age badly (heavier, losing hair). Is that Shawn?.

 

I wouldn't say that either of them is aging badly. Aaron tends to keep his hair short. It was short when he did "Warehouse 13". So if you see a picture of the two of them together and one has a buzz cut then that would be Aaron. I Think he might have been a bit heavier for awhile.

That's actually it, pretty much.  Aaron tends to have shorter hair then Shawn, in most of their stuff.  But I think a lot of it is just that I watched the first two X-Men films so many times as a kid, I'm just now able to notice minor differences between the Ashmores, that when I see Shawn I'm like "Iceman!", and when I see Aaron, I'm more "That's not Iceman; that's an imposter!"

 

Not that I'm slagging Aaron or anything.  I enjoy him whenever her shows up and I thought he was pretty fun here.

[Wynterwolf]

I hate when TPTB double down on characters that aren't working, for example, Sleepy Hollow expanding Katrina's role before finally throwing in the towel when viewers really revolted. On the other hand, Revolution smartly deemphasized Charlie...

 

I definitely think less is more with D'Avin, so I hope they go the Charlie route.  I actually ended up liking her character quite a bit by the end, despite that shows other flaws.  Plus, Dutch and Johnny have such a fun vibe, I want to see more of them interacting together, instead of pushing so hard on the 'potential love interest' angle with D'Avin

[tennisgurl]

Liked what I have seen so far a lot. Like the characters, especially Johnny and Dutch, and I love the world building, and the setting. I don't mind being thrown right in, I like being respected enough as a viewer to not be spoon fed exposition. 

 

They could really use a super intelligent Corgi though...

[nobodyyoucare]

 

Supposedly a Companion was a fairly prestigious job, analogous to a diplomat, but Mal continued to think of Inara as a whore.

The predecessors of the Geisha were high class courtesans who were respected in their communities but they were still prostitutes. In fact the word whore comes from an old English word that came from the German word for prostitute. So technically Mal is right to call Imara a whore because that is what she is. 

[Raja]

I was thinking in broader world-view terms and what a genre sci-fi show would try to deliver to a viewing audience.  This quote in particular made me wonder:

 

 

It seems like what he's hinting at is that sex isn't necessarily thought of as something inherently connected to your orientation, but rather something you do with whomever as needed. Instead of this being just the purview of spies, is a total worldview for this time/place/setting.  If this were the case that ideology would be rather progressive for a tv show.  I've seen it in actual written SFF books, but not sure if I have seen it on tv shows.

 

Since people have brought up Firefly in comparison to this show, one of the things that bugged me so completely with Firefly was Mal's attitude wrt to Inara's role as a Companion.  Supposedly a Companion was a fairly prestigious job, analogous to a diplomat, but Mal continued to think of Inara as a whore.  In a science fiction/fantasy show you have the opportunity to create your own social paradigm, build your own world system.  You don't have to use current world ideas or morality as a measure.   I just thought it was a missed opportunity for Firefly to view  the idea sex work as an actual profession, divorced from moral judgement and that  the concept of 'whore' would be totally alien to those people.

The show did present a different view of prostitutes and their role in society. Only it was the villains and the winners of the universe setting war who held the new paradigm. The brown shirts including Captain Reynolds and a small few in the frontier worlds they visted held on to the older prejudices against sex work. Our heroes were more the Confederates against the United States than the Patriots against the Loyalist

[Izeinwinter]

The browncoats generally did not come across as having been very nice people at all. I suppose that's fitting if you are looting the aftermath of  the slaveholders rebellion for setting... 

Edited June 23, 2015 by Izeinwinter

[gaby4ever25]

I didn't expect to like the show as much as I did. It was entertaining through out and smartly portrayed. I have to say that D'Avin was my favorite character, however I liked Dutch a lot too. Both were badass without being annoying. I also hope they don't pair them up if only to keep the relationship with the three main characters as friendly as possible. The brothers have enough issues to deal with on top of Dutch's secrets.

I want to know why D'Avin had a kill warrant. My guess is that it was issued to lure Johnny in order for D'Avin to get closer to Dutch.

[MissLucas]

 

So it seems like the general opinion (using this forum as a possibly skewed microcosm) is that the older brother didn't work. Wonder if the showrunners got that from any previews or from post-episode feedback, and whether they'll try to address it by tweaking the character.

Beware the hive-mind - there are people here who like him and I've seen reviews that menitoned the instant brotherly rapport between Ashmore and McFarlane as one of the best things about the pilot.

Edited June 23, 2015 by MissLucas

[Danny Franks]

Beware the hive-mind - there are people here who like him and I've seen reviews that menitoned the instant brotherly rapport between Ashmore and McFarlane as one of the best things about the pilot.

 

That's why I said "potentially skewed". But I don't think "hive mind" is an accurate term to use, because that suggests that people don't like him simply because they're blindly following the reasoning of others, which I don't think is the case. Everyone who commented on the brother did so after watching the pilot episode for themselves, and I would assume their current opinion of him stems from how they themselves felt about him in the episode.

[DearEvette]

The show did present a different view of prostitutes and their role in society. Only it was the villains and the winners of the universe setting war who held the new paradigm. The brown shirts including Captain Reynolds and a small few in the frontier worlds they visted held on to the older prejudices against sex work. Our heroes were more the Confederates against the United States than the Patriots against the Loyalist

 

Yeah, I get that the show attempted to present a more evolved view, but my point about a missed opportunity was more in relation to this part of my response:

 

"the idea sex work as an actual profession, divorced from moral judgement and that  the concept of 'whore' would be totally alien to those people."

 

I was thinking more along the lines that in Science Fiction & Fantasy you have the freedom to create a entire society from the ground up so why make the people in your world system mimic current mindset?  In one of the episodes everyone was shocked/surprised/titillated  that one of her clients was a woman.  It just was the same old, same old, imo. It came off less in Firefly, that society had evolved, but rather we just threw our 20th century mindset into outer space and put on a prettier dress.    Hence it would have been more interesting rather than to just to recreate attitudes with a small tweak, but to unspool them altogether and make the idea of sex work analogous to being a doctor or a accountant.  Just another job with no inherent negative, moral connotations attached so that the terms 'prostitute' or 'whore' just don't even exist in either the ideology or the vocabulary.

 

So yeah, I just thought...ugh, you go to the trouble of creating this Companion, complete with rules and status,  but then you immediately undermine what could have been something really different by doing absolutely nothing different.

 

Sorry, this feels like a derail of the topic of Killjoys, but I kinda geek out on shit like this so... I'll just leave this here.

[MissLucas]

 

But I don't think "hive mind" is an accurate term to use, because that suggests that people don't like him simply because they're blindly following the reasoning of others, which I don't think is the case.

My apologies if it came across that way but that's not what I meant by the term - it's just that over the years I've visited different forums for different shows and often noticed wildly differing opinons on identical topics. A much hated plot in one place would get lots of applause in another. People who agree with each other will reaffirm each other's opinion and sometimes people who disagree feel intimidated and all of a sudden it looks as if 'fandom' is in complete agreement. I've become cautious because often 'fandom' in another place sees things differently. It's only when something (an actor, a character or a plot development) gets criticized in lots of different places that showrunners should start to worry. Sleepy Hollow's season 2 run is such a case . Since we've only been through the pilot of Killyjoys yet we'll have to wait and see.

[Izeinwinter]

The brotherly bickering did work. The issue I had was that he had anti-chemistry with Dutch. I'm hoping thats supposed to be him trying to cozy up to her and being very bad at it, because if they intend this to be a ship, it's going to sink before making it all the way out of the drydock. 

Edited June 23, 2015 by Izeinwinter

[The Crazed Spruce]

Just a reminder, this is the Killjoys forum, not the Firefly one. Inara's not a character on this show, so any discussion about her and her profession should be moved to the appropriate forum.

[Danny Franks]

My apologies if it came across that way but that's not what I meant by the term - it's just that over the years I've visited different forums for different shows and often noticed wildly differing opinons on identical topics. A much hated plot in one place would get lots of applause in another. People who agree with each other will reaffirm each other's opinion and sometimes people who disagree feel intimidated and all of a sudden it looks as if 'fandom' is in complete agreement. I've become cautious because often 'fandom' in another place sees things differently. It's only when something (an actor, a character or a plot development) gets criticized in lots of different places that showrunners should start to worry. Sleepy Hollow's season 2 run is such a case . Since we've only been through the pilot of Killyjoys yet we'll have to wait and see.

 

Understood. That's a phenomenon I've always found quite odd. Because you'd expect a fair distribution of fan opinions, throughout the various platforms they congregate on. But I've often seen that one forum will feel one way very strongly, and another will feel another way very strongly, right from the start of a show, so it's not as if people were attracted to places that shared their views. But this is really the only TV site I visit, these days, so the initial negative reaction to D'Avin was noticeable to me (not least because I share it).

 

I don't think it's that tough, really, to create believable brother chemistry between two actors, because they can just start bickering and talking over the top of one another, and being petty. And there you have it: Brothers.

[Wynterwolf]

Watched it a second time (which I haven't felt like doing with any show in a loooong time), and I enjoyed it even more.  I still am not at all charmed by the D'avin, and I am usually drawn to the Han Solo/Dean Winchester type like a beacon.  And he still comes across as a complete tool to me (I have no past experience with the actor, I've never seen him in anything else before), but my dislike wasn't as strong the second time around and the ep didn't seem quite as out of balance as it did on my initial viewing.  

 

I was still annoyed with how hard they hit the UST between Dutch and D'avin, but upon reflection, it was more how her reaction to him was played than him leering at her.  And it wasn't even as heavy as I'd first felt, but I think because I don't like D'avin, and I immediately loved Dutch, I don't want to see her reacting to him like that this fast.  

 

Everything else I loved even more the second time around, I love political intrigue in my SF/F and they have a great cast of supporting characters to flesh those stories out.  Bring on episode 2!!   

[cynic]

Yeah, D'avin seems like a tool to me too and he just feels like a character I've seen a million times before. I'm much more interested in Dutch and John and their respectful, caring friendship.

[Duke Silver]

The guy playing D'avin comes across as Brandon Routh'ish to me...and I don't normally enjoy Routh perfromances/characters.

 

I agree w/ what appears to be a building consensus:  if it was a matter of Killjoys vs. Dark Matter, Killjoys wins hands down.

[Jordan27]

For me this was just a little above average.  Dutch is adorable to look at, but a good looking girl with fighting skills who is a smart aleck has been done so many times. 

 

The Buffy influence is still being felt.

[Bruinsfan]

Ironically, it was Pree's common sensical "Bitch, how charming do you think you are?" comment that made me start to really like Dutch. The fact that she has that sort of camaraderie with characters other than her partner/hetero life-mate indicated a well-roundedness that intrigued me.