I don't know enough about the show to either like it or dislike it, but it does annoy the hell out of me that you'd assume that based on the fact that I found fault with your arguments. My agenda, if any, is that I'm sick of people assuming that just because they are entitled to dislike a show, that any reasoning they use to justify that belief is automatically valid.
If you say that you dislike a show for reasons X, Y, and Z, that does not automatically mean that all three reasons are valid. Yes, you are more than welcome to dislike the show. And yes, there is probably some validity in your reasons. That does not mean that your reasons are necessarily 100% valid.
Maybe your instincts are right and all of your points will turn out to be valid. Then again, maybe there was one or more scenes that got cut for time that would have made you reconsider reason X. Maybe there's something in the next episode which would make reason Y look a bit dicey. Of course, after another episode or two, you might also have reason A, B, and C to dislike it. And even if all of your original impressions turned out to be wrong, the show might still never be your cup of tea. All of which is FINE. What is less fine is assuming that your impressions based on just the pilot are right.
I'm willing to watch another episode or two before I reach a conclusion. If you don't want to, that's fine. But I am totally justified in pointing out that you're making assumptions. Making assumptions isn't a crime, but it's not unreasonable to expect people to be aware that they're making assumptions.
It's not uncommon for it to take a new show a couple of episodes to really get a handle on their own characters. In my opinion, they can still salvage the show. There's a good chance that they won't. Though, that's really beside the point. Accusing a show of being crappy based on one episode, I can understand. But I do not make accusations of sexism lightly, and this show, while in dicey territory, hasn't yet convinced me that's there's sexism involved. (Why attribute to sexism what can be explained by ineptness?) If she doesn't get her act together, then fine, probably sexism. If she does get her act together, then that's the story. It's not as if people are born strong.
You can decide that you know my feelings about male characters, however inaccurate your perception may be.
What I know is that you expressed confusion at to why in the world they would want to make the character a dropout bartender instead of a professional athlete. Now, if you had said instead that you thought they had dropped the ball on their execution of Jaime-as-an-ordinary-person, that would be a reasonable point. The fact that you acted as if it was a stupid, incomprehensible thing for them to even attempt, that is what bugs me. Disagreeing with the way they went about it is fine, but an apparent inability to even understand what they were trying to do, that is not okay with me.
And yeah, I drew some conclusions about you because of it, which may or may not have been valid (which is not unironic under the circumstances). The reason I drew those particular conclusions is because I can't for the life of me imagine us having this conversation if Jaime were male, but otherwise more or less identical. Would people have questioned the change from athlete to bartender if the character were male? Sure, because fandom question everything (which is not a bad thing in itself). But if a main male character is a loser, nobody makes accusations of sexism. The equivalent female character gets criticized left, right, and center.
Now, maybe in this case the criticism will turn out to be valid, but I'm not remotely convinced that it's clear yet whether or not that's the case.
but I'm not here to salve your conscience about how you think people should feel.
...that sentence doesn't even make sense. Seriously.
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Date: 2007-09-29 02:15 pm (UTC)I don't know enough about the show to either like it or dislike it, but it does annoy the hell out of me that you'd assume that based on the fact that I found fault with your arguments. My agenda, if any, is that I'm sick of people assuming that just because they are entitled to dislike a show, that any reasoning they use to justify that belief is automatically valid.
If you say that you dislike a show for reasons X, Y, and Z, that does not automatically mean that all three reasons are valid. Yes, you are more than welcome to dislike the show. And yes, there is probably some validity in your reasons. That does not mean that your reasons are necessarily 100% valid.
Maybe your instincts are right and all of your points will turn out to be valid. Then again, maybe there was one or more scenes that got cut for time that would have made you reconsider reason X. Maybe there's something in the next episode which would make reason Y look a bit dicey. Of course, after another episode or two, you might also have reason A, B, and C to dislike it. And even if all of your original impressions turned out to be wrong, the show might still never be your cup of tea. All of which is FINE. What is less fine is assuming that your impressions based on just the pilot are right.
I'm willing to watch another episode or two before I reach a conclusion. If you don't want to, that's fine. But I am totally justified in pointing out that you're making assumptions. Making assumptions isn't a crime, but it's not unreasonable to expect people to be aware that they're making assumptions.
It's not uncommon for it to take a new show a couple of episodes to really get a handle on their own characters. In my opinion, they can still salvage the show. There's a good chance that they won't. Though, that's really beside the point. Accusing a show of being crappy based on one episode, I can understand. But I do not make accusations of sexism lightly, and this show, while in dicey territory, hasn't yet convinced me that's there's sexism involved. (Why attribute to sexism what can be explained by ineptness?) If she doesn't get her act together, then fine, probably sexism. If she does get her act together, then that's the story. It's not as if people are born strong.
You can decide that you know my feelings about male characters, however inaccurate your perception may be.
What I know is that you expressed confusion at to why in the world they would want to make the character a dropout bartender instead of a professional athlete. Now, if you had said instead that you thought they had dropped the ball on their execution of Jaime-as-an-ordinary-person, that would be a reasonable point. The fact that you acted as if it was a stupid, incomprehensible thing for them to even attempt, that is what bugs me. Disagreeing with the way they went about it is fine, but an apparent inability to even understand what they were trying to do, that is not okay with me.
And yeah, I drew some conclusions about you because of it, which may or may not have been valid (which is not unironic under the circumstances). The reason I drew those particular conclusions is because I can't for the life of me imagine us having this conversation if Jaime were male, but otherwise more or less identical. Would people have questioned the change from athlete to bartender if the character were male? Sure, because fandom question everything (which is not a bad thing in itself). But if a main male character is a loser, nobody makes accusations of sexism. The equivalent female character gets criticized left, right, and center.
Now, maybe in this case the criticism will turn out to be valid, but I'm not remotely convinced that it's clear yet whether or not that's the case.
but I'm not here to salve your conscience about how you think people should feel.
...that sentence doesn't even make sense. Seriously.