S01.E02: A Fruitful Partnership

[walnutqueen]

53 minutes ago, Calamity Jane said:

When I'm good and agitated, it's fuckety fuckety fuck fuck fuck.  

Heh.  Trixie the whore is my spirit animal.

(Get thee to Deadwood if you ever feel the need to hear variations of fuckety fuckety fuck fuck fuck...)

[BingeyKohan]

do we think that Moore is actually going to remember anything he was told by the boy in the room when they were alone, or was that info-dump just for our (the viewers') benefit? 

[tessathereaper]

On 1/31/2018 at 6:32 PM, Neurochick said:

I don't see it as making these people as villains but more like, people who don't think critically, who just parrot what their parents and everybody else says, even if it makes zero sense.  

Also, they don't really have to try to make these people out to be villains.  A modern audience WILL see them, if not as villains, then at least in a less positive light compared to those with more modern viewpoints because....they have views that are no longer looked upon in a positive light.   I mean the characters' own, to modern sensibilities, unsympathetic viewpoints are pretty much doing the writers work for them in terms of making those characters seem more villainous.  Naturally the characters with more modern viewpoints will be seen in a better light than those who hold the viewpoints which may have been more in keeping with their own times.  I mean I'm not seeing anyone made out to be a villain in the show simply because they hold a less modern viewpoint, if they are made out to be villains it's based on them being well, nasty/rude/unkind/lacking in compassion/bullies. 

[qtpye]

The AV club's review of the episode  https://www.avclub.com/the-alienist-steps-into-its-own-and-stumbles-1822535181

Excerpt
 

Quote

 

I actually wonder how much of this narrative oddness comes from one of the central issues of the adaptation; how to handle the victims (and potential victims) without falling into titillating gore, objectification, or careless categorization. Certainly the point this episode goes off the rails is the moment John sees the pair of boots dangling on the hook and heads into the brothel. I’m just not sure whether that scene itself is the problem, or the symptom of the problem.

It’s always tricky to try to map modern gender discussion over past gender discussion; non-heteronormative folks have always existed, but the framework—terms, community, identities, acceptance—varies so widely depending on the moment and place that there’s no formula for getting it completely right. Though it seems likely not all of the teens working at Shang Draper’s would have identified as transgender, the show has presented Gloria Santorelli as a trans girl, and Sally—the girl John meets in the brothel—similarly. And that’s fine, as far as it goes; these kids being the targets of our serial killer is never going to be less awkward a thing to work around, so presenting them with the maximum amount of internal life and personal agency is the best way to avoid the trap of merely presenting objectified victims. We’ve gotten as far as “being effete and being inclined to a contrary sexual instinct are two distinct things”...

...and that’s about as much work as this episode’s willing to do. The base level of sympathy is clearly higher among our heroes than everyone else, but risks making the characters’ perceptions, but everywhere else, the children in danger from the killer are still caught somewhere between titillation and victimization. The girls at Shang Draper’s are arranged in louche tableaux; the camera repeatedly lingers on performers and workers in a way that’s meant to foreground both their sexuality and their tragedy. By the time Sally’s pouting “You’re not very fun” and calling in backup—and Ellison and Kelly suggest some of the other brothel workers take care of it—there’s a sense that the show is trying to unpack something without knowing what it’s meant to be unpacking. A meta-mystery of adaptation, maybe; certainly it’s the show’s most obvious weakness.

 

[formerlyfreedom]

A reminder; if you talk about the book in the episode topic, it will be removed. Please either take discussion of the book to the Book Talk topic, or spoiler tag it in here. Posts have been removed; repeated infractions may result in warnings. Thank you.

[proserpina65]

On 1/30/2018 at 6:53 AM, sjohnson said:

The whole sequence plays a little fast and loose with ages, just enough younger boys, including some who may be prepubescent, to equate homosexuality and pedophilia (where have we heard that one before?)

Well, houses of prostitution tended to keep prostitutes of various ages on hand, to cater to the widest possible range of clientele.  This wasn't uncommon for houses with female prostitutes.  You wouldn't find a mix of female and male prostitutes in the same house, and those catering to men wanting boys dressed as girls would seem to be even more specialized, but age ranges weren't unusual.  (Yes, I've read far too much about Victorian prostitution.)

On 1/31/2018 at 3:26 PM, sjohnson said:

As for being sickened, the notion that Moore hasn't seen girls of a suspicious youth strikes me as highly unlikely. Nor does it seem likely to me that even Moore is so gullible as to think the women  he's seen were free from compulsion of some sort or other. I think the show has skipped showing the young girls and showing the exploitation so obviously because it is conflating pedophilia and homosexuality. 

I think the show is concentrating on boy prostitutes because they are the ones being murdered.  I don't think it's conflating pedophilia and homosexuality at all.  And I don't think Moore was terrified prior to realizing he had been drugged.  Uncomfortable, sickened, yes, but terrified, no.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Loved the dinner scene! On a shallow note, I loved the dress that Sara wore to dinner.

Laszlo is quite skilled at manipulating the people around him into doing exactly what he wants.

I like the addition of the Isaacson brothers to the team. They add some much needed levity (although I did laugh at the humorous scenes with Laszlo and John at the opera).

One of my favorite things at the opera scene was that instead of watching the actual opera, Laszlo and John were using their opera glasses to people watch. Heh, the crack about JP Morgan's ever growing family made me laugh.

As someone who majored in history, I agree with the previous posts that said modern sensibilities aren't always as modern as we think. There's a tendency for us to assume that we in the present are so modern with our attitudes and that everyone from more than a few decades ago all had old fashioned attitudes about everything back then, which simply isn't true. There have been women chafing against social restraints and double standards for hundreds of years. I find it both heartening and saddening that women have been fighting against these things for so long.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Inside the episode:

 

Clip:
A toast to the beginning:

[rove4]

On ‎1‎/‎30‎/‎2018 at 5:53 PM, Kirsty said:

And in my case, I was criticizing not the fact that Laszlo's living the way he chooses, but that he's preaching at others about how they should live, which makes it more pointed.

Given that the world is full of people who do exactly this, I'm still not sure what the problem is.  *shrugs*

[Neurochick]

I binged the first four episodes last night (the best way to watch this show IMO) and man, that last scene, in the brothel, is one of the creepiest, most harrowing things I've seen on TV.  It was filmed like, you were watching a horror movie; nothing sexy or erotic about the place at all, and it got worse as the drug that John was slipped started to take effect.  I watched that scene twice last night, creepy as all hell.

[Robert Lynch]

Considering this is late 19th Century New York, children living in poor or dirt poor conditions had no choice except to become factory workers or resort to prostitution. The only way a child is spared if he or she is born to wealth. Without it, they were treated like any other low class vermin. I read the Victorian era and how some of the treatments of teenage prostitution was really rampant among seedy sections of London. If you consider all the diseases people carried then, the life of a poor child was cut short due to rampant stench or dying prematurely due to illness. Living in those times was not great when you were poor. If you were rich, great. If you are poor, goodbye. Your time is up. Sad, but that was how it was then.