And now, more fannishment ...

[apocalypsos]

Verdict: Boy, that was just really ludicrously awful, wasn't it?

Let's see ... I don't like the characters (I don't even like Miguel Ferrer and I adore Miguel Ferrer, and while I didn't get to see the entire original pilot where the little sister was deaf and Mae Whitman, I liked what I saw of her a lot more than I do now that she's a bratty computer hacker -- ooo, edgy! -- and a low-rate Rachel Bilson), the episode didn't flow at all as if the scenes were hastily chopped together, and the dialogue made me want to gag. "I'll bury one guy after the next"? Urgh.

And let's not even talk about the little girl saying pretty much directly into the camera, "I just thought it was cool a girl could do that," which offended some part of me so deeply I would have thrown my laptop across the room if it hadn't been, you know, my BABY. I imagine it's supposed to be some sort of thinly veiled feminist statement, but it fails so miserably I can't even comprehend. I mean, really, didn't we all think only boys could run sixty miles per hour?! (That's not what she meant, of course, but considering that was the first reaction that popped into my head, that's not good.)

And there are so very many things about the relationship between Jaime and Will that are skin-crawlingly skeevy I don't even want to think about it.

I just ... ugh. I would think I couldn't possibly hate this show any more than I already do but then I remember the PTB hired Isaiah Washington as if it were some great fucking casting coup and then I realize, no, actually, it COULD get worse.

Verdict: AWESOME. Oh, man, that's a great followup to suffering through The Bionic Woman. Charlie's great, the partner's great (the Woman in White! *squeaks*), and I maybe spazzed out at Alan Arkin (EDIT: ARGH. Meant to type Adam Arkin, typed Alan. I know the difference, I swear. That's what they get for having similar names. Hmph.) being the financial advisor/best buddy, especially during that last scene. "You want to drive the tractor." "You know, I think I kinda do." *snickers*

It inspires great fannish glee in me so I am most definitely torrenting it again next week.

Comments

[poisontaster]

I'm a dropout myself. It's not meant to be, per se, a value judgment. I just question why they made the changes that they did, from a professional athlete to a woman who doesn't have very much interior or exterior life.

[budclare.livejournal.com]

Because it entirely changes the dynamic of the show? Because they had a choice between using a character who was relatively extraordinary to begin with and make her even more extraordinary, or make a random ordinary person extraordinary? They gave a (moderate) screw-up superpowers, and this is supposed to be a bad thing? Not that she's all that screwed up anyway. While bartending isn't exactly a great job, it puts food on the table for her and her sister. As a dropout, she could have done a hell of a lot worse, and we don't have the faintest idea what her long-term plans are/were. Presumably she doesn't plan to tend bar for the rest of her life, but it gives her a steady income while she's got a minor to look after. (Also, athletes are boring. *is lazy and biased*)

In spite of the insane amount of exposition that they tried to cram in there, we really don't know a damn thing about her yet. It's a little early to be making assumptions.

*is sick to death of female characters being given way more crap than male characters*

[poisontaster]

It seems to me that you have a preconceived agenda that you're bringing into this conversation. You can like the show if you want to. You can decide that you know my feelings about male characters, however inaccurate your perception may be. You can crucify me for the failings of fandom in regards to women. But that doesn't and won't change my viewpoint. I didn't like the show. I didn't like the MEN in the show and how they treated women. I dislike how the MALE producers chose to depict women in the show. I am sorry that you find my opinion offensive, but I'm not here to salve your conscience about how you think people should feel.

[budclare.livejournal.com]

You can like the show if you want to.

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.

[sixersfan.livejournal.com]

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.
What would it have taken? It seemed pretty blatant to me.

[budclare.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I don't find your opinion offensive. More like vaguely irritating. (Apparently another thing I'm fundamentally sick of is people equating "annoyed" with "offended". Totally different words, my hand to god.)

Just so we're clear, I was irritated because really nothing in the world annoys me as much as a failure to understand. Even when you don't agree with someone, it's usually possible to understand them. In this case, I don't think that it should be mystifying why they chose to make Jaime ordinary, even if you disagree with the decision or the execution. Maybe you just didn't explain yourself very well, but it certainly sounded as if you didn't understand, rather than that you just disagreed.

[poisontaster]

Several times now you have pointed out that you are "sick and tired of people doing x" MY point is that you are making a large assumption about how I conduct myself and making ME pay for the sins of others and how fed up you are about them. I am SO SORRY that you feel "people" pile more on female characters than male. I am SO SORRY that offends you personally. BUT I AM NOT "PEOPLE". I am a singular person and you do not know me well enough to know HOW I normally react to male or female characters and you do not know enough to decide that how I feel about THIS PARTICULAR FEMALE CHARACTER is an endemic flaw.

Do not make me pay for the sins of fandom. And I am not interested in hijacking any more of Jenn's time with this. If you want to rail at me some more, I suggest you take it offline.

[budclare.livejournal.com]

Just because I happened to mention several times that I'm sick of people behaving in a certain way does not mean that I was being unfair, BECAUSE YOU WERE BEHAVING THAT WAY. Just because I'm usually too tired to argue with people when they do something that bothers me does NOT mean that I'm not entitled to complain about it EVER. And regardless, you managed to push something like THREE of my buttons in under a day, which is likely unprecedented and takes a special kind of talent. Most people only hit one at a time, occasionally two. So really what I know about you is that our personalities conflict profoundly, and that I should go back to avoiding the hell out of you.

And you got so distracted by the fact that I happened to mention that you had hit on some of my pet peeves that you completely ignored the actual points that I made. But yeah, I shouldn't have mentioned it, and wouldn't have had I not been so grumpy yesterday. But that doesn't mean you weren't behaving ridiculously too.

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

Exactly. There's a vast difference between this Jaime Sommers and the previous one. Disregarding their occupations, the original Jaime was more of a person than a series of cliched roles intended to drop her deeper and deeper into a big pool of angst. Was this Jaime happy about anything the entire pilot? At all? She was antagonized by her sister, intimidated by her boyfriend, uncomfortable at the thought of being pregnant, anguished at losing at the baby, pissed about being kept prisoner, anxious and upset about acquiring new abilities, and angry about the Sarah Corvis thing. There's no sense of humor there, no smiles, no occasional sarcasm. And granted, it's still the first episode and not a lot of good things happened to the poor woman, but for Christ's sake, why do I want to see her every week if she's going to mug all the goddamn time?

I mean, look at Lindsay Wagner's Jaime. She was smart, straight-forward, strong, with a great dry sense of humor. I don't get any of that with this Jaime. The most I got was someone else saying she was smart -- smarter than Miguel Ferrer's leader-of-the-team character -- but I saw no evidence in her behavior to show she really was.

[poisontaster]

And personally, if a show can't make a good case for tuning in next week (which BW has NOT) with their pilot...then why do a pilot?

It's the same problem I had with Private Practice. With a season opener, with a pilot...you need to bring your A game. This is a ratings war; what are you doing to win your part of the war? Because shiny special effects are not enough for me personally. I need a character I actually care about. And so far, they haven't really given me one. Probably the closest is Sarah Corvis and she's only a recurring character.

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes, YES. I mean, let's take the feminism problems out of the equation. The writing itself is awful. The scenes felt hacked together with the use of a chainsaw and a roll of duct tape. There was no subtlety to it, and a hell of a lot of telling rather than showing. The characters never showed any sense of humor at all or said anything that made me do anything other than make a face, making for an uneven balance in the dialogue. Hell, even Lost's pilot episode featured the occasional bit of humor -- even in the worst situations, people still say and do things that provide morbid humor for the audience ... well, except for this show.

And I don't like any of these people. Jaime is always dour. The sister is a brat. The boyfriend is an asshat. The boss is a jerk. Jesus, why do I want to watch these people every week?

It felt a lot like a bad fanfic, and if reading the first chapter of a godawful fanfic is enough to make me avoid the rest of the story at all costs, I'm certainly not going to continue to watch a show that made me mutter, "God, this thing needs a beta," just hoping it gets better. I've already got Life, Pushing Daisies, Journeyman and Chuck added to my watch list. I'm done.

[poisontaster]

And yes, right back atcha. I watch the pilots to see if anything is interesting enough to add to my TV schedule. But if it can't snag me within that window of opportunity...I have lots of other TV to watch and lots of other things I need to be doing with my time than to waste it on something that I only sorta like, or don't really like at all.

I'm so excited about Pushing Daisies! I added all the same shows *g* and that's definitely my favorite of all of them.

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

Oh, I am dying for new Pushing Daisies. I've been watching the same glorious episode for weeks now and I'm craving more. :)

And in a related vein, the pilot of Pushing Daisies is like the complete opposite of Bionic Woman when it comes to the strength of their female characters. Chuck is a brilliant character -- she's sharp and brave, loyal and capable, warm and witty. In one episode I managed to find out more about her personality than I felt like I'd ever learn about Jaime Sommers. Plus, Jaime puts up with her home situation with an ever-suffering version of the "loyalty" she's supposed to possess, while Chuck fills the same caretaker role with twice as much loyalty and far more cheer than Jaime.

And the aunts! Oh, how I love the aunts. It only takes them one episode to show real growth by leaving their house even though Chuck is gone. They're awesome role models even as shut-ins, so it's no wonder Chuck turned out the way she did.

Hell, even Olive -- who's kind of annoying in any dose longer than a few short minutes -- knows what she wants and goes for it. Granted, she's going after Ned and she doesn't really know the whole story, but STILL.

Oh, oh! And the great thing about Ned and Chuck not being able to touch is that the will-they-won't-they physical part of their relationship doesn't become nearly as important as the mental aspects. It's lovely and quirky and ... yeah, um, I kind of want to make out with the pilot. Heh. :)

[poisontaster]

God, yes. And really, that's a lot of what I look for in a pilot. I'll be the first to say that a pilot is a tough sell because you have to introduce the characters AND thread a plotline through it, but Pushing Daisies is a GREAT example of how it should be done. I was literally BOUNCING when I finished watching the pilot and I've been breathless for it ever since then. I saw the one episode and now I can't WAIT to "visit" with these characters again.

And even in sketch form, you're completely right; you know what these characters are about, you see actual personal change/growth through just that ONE HOUR, and there's enough personality infused through it to make you feel like you KNOW SOMETHING about these characters.