Thoughts, ramblings and other stuff

And I mean bad in both senses - the bad because the story was lousy and the bad ending opposite of happy ending.

The first one is much more upsetting. I was so angry at the Once Upon a Time winter finale. I liked the Dark One storyline. It went back to the first season format but it worked well with the story and I loved Emma's Dark One. I loved Regina in the saviour role and Merlin was great (but I'm still upset they just killed him off like that). I rolled my eyes at Emma did it for love but Killian's Dark One was fun and I sat through worse story lines in OUaT. However, the way they went and undid everything with Gold. The way he just went back to being Dark One and lying to Belle and how Emma lets her stay with him for her own ends - it all made me fill like I just wasted the last several months on nothing. We are right were we where a year ago just before Belle found out his last betrayal and kicked him out of Storybrooke starting this whole thing.. They keep going back to status quo - with Regina and especially Gold - but this one really pissed me off. I'm on the edge of quitting this show. I'm just so annoyed that we just went through half of season for nothing. And the pairing off of Mulan and Red doesn't help. I understand they give fans the lesbian love story they asked for but they do it by putting spares together. And they do it by making them go on a quest together in a story that is so side that it's a side story to Mulan's side story. But for me the most annoying thing is that's another repeat. It was strongly implied when Mulan shown up the first time that she fell for Phillip when they were searching for Aurora. Then she fell for Aurora when they were searching for Phillip. Now she's off searching for more werewolves with Red. It's like she falls in love with whomever she happens to help in a quest. That's kind of offensive (to the character and viewers).

Then there is the whole slate of CW shows that decided to end on depressing note.

The iZombie winter finale took everything that was good and turned it to dust. They've been amping the side effects of brains this whole season and it finally fully hit. Liv was so happy when she and Major got back together but it tried to be the same thing it used to be and they are not the same people and their relationship cannot be the same again. This wasn't that bad since I was really upset by Major this season and he is still lying to her (for her own good - just like she did to him last season - those two need to quit with this abuse or quit each other for good). I would not be able to forgive if he was really killing all those people but this is barely better - he basically kidnaps people and stores them for later hoping the problem (Max Rager evil owners and zombies) will go away. This is not a real solution (neither was his weirdly short dip into addiction that he just quit when Liv gave him the right pep talk). And we now also know that there is no real solution. At least not long term. And that both he and Blain can turn back into zombies at any moment. So both Liv and Major relationship and search for cure goes back to square one but at least, unlike OUaT, the emotional and scientific journey actually progresses and that makes iZombie much less frustrating. Here people at least learn something.

The Originals made me the most aggravated because they gave me Rebekah (my precious, evil ray of sunshine) back and then took her away. Making her crazy evil along the way. She is once again staked and put in a box somewhere. The even worse alternative to her being put on a bus again. I understand that Claire Holt doesn't want to commit full time and Maisie Richardson-Sellers is in Star Wars now but I still wish there was a better way to disappear her character (I liked the previous reasons for Rebekah to leave so much better). And then they go and kill Cami after Klaus pretty much admits he loves her (at least to himself). I can't say if they just fully fridged her or is she coming back as vampire or whatever but she is going to e another excuse for him to go on a murder rampage anyway. What even worse she gets murdered by Klaus' psycho ex-girlfiend. They even gave her actual mental illness and then made her into the most ridiculous psycho ex-girlfiend stereotype. Ughhhh.

The Arrow has been teasing us with death of one (or several) members of Team Arrow the whole episode. Then we get some pretty impressive display of teamwork and nicely outsmarting the bad guy while not giving away Oliver's secret identity. But then Felicity gets shot anyway. This is why I didn't want Olicity. It's because I hate Felicity becoming The Girlfriend. This is what always happens to The Girlfriend - kidnapped, shot, at least not killed (but if she was pregnant and lost the baby I will need to hurt someone). Writers just love this trope - two CW shows ended with this one.

At least The Flash was mostly happy. The big secret is out and Joe got to meet his son and Iris her brother Wally. There is only that little issue of them setting up Harrison Wells as traitor. I think we are supposed to think - again - but my main pet peeve with this season is that they keep blaming Harrison Wells for what happened last season. But they never met real Harrison Wells. Not a single one of them. Just an impostor. Real Harrison Wells got the worst deal of them all. Not only he, and his fiancée, got murdered by Eobard Thawne. He also gets blamed for all that guy did. From devastating the city and creating metahumans to killing Barry's mum. And even the people who know he wasn't guilty blame him instead of at least trying to clear his name. Would it really be so hard to convince people a guy took over his face in a world full of people with superpowers (one of them actually even had that power)?

And now that I thought about it Agents of SHIELD also had a bad ending. I mean Fitz and Coulson are back but Will is dead, all the imprisoned Inhumans are dead and Lash and Maveth parasite are on the loose. HYDRA got everything they wanted and our heroes only managed not too die. Well, at least Ward is dead. That’s one good thing that came out of all of this.

My TV tastes are a little uncommon. I'm not overly fond of the two guys solving the case of the week type of shows. I prefer to have larger group of people and I like story arcs. I got bored by Supernatural after couple of episodes and all my tries to get to it later ended the same eventually (also because all the interesting secondary characters die and I hate the main ones). I only really got into Person of Interest after Carter learned the truth and I like it so much more now that it has a team. Grimm became more and more fun as characters learned what was going on. And Sleepy Hollow became more interesting with Jenny and Frank helping out.


So I'm probably the only one who liked the idea of Katrina and Hawley joining the team. But then it turned out the writers didn't really know what to do with them. Katrina has never really been allowed to the powerful witch we were told she was. Hawley meanwhile has been badly pushed as a love interest but they couldn't decided whether for Abbie or Jenny. Everyone hated them so Hawley was put on the bus and it looks like Katrina is turning evil. When you don't have an idea how to deal with a character just do what crowd screams for. Since this kind of hate always makes me want to be contrary I'm probably the only person in existence who wants Katrina to be the one making right choices and finding the solutions.

She suffers from a kind of bad writing that always pisses me off. The kind that creates a character who's an object, a goal to obtain by the protagonist, a motivation for their actions, a plot point. Characters like this don't exist as actual people, they don't have a personality or their own goals and stories. So if the protagonist achieves the goal of finding/rescuing them the writers usually don't know how to deal with that. How to switch them from the idealised object of desire to an actual person.

So Katrina the super powerful witch and great spy becomes ineffective even at her stated area of expertise. She spends half of the season imprisoned again where she fails at spying and getting rid of Moloch and then almost all of her magic fails. She's not allowed to ever capitalise on her stated power because our main heroes must be the ones defeating the enemy. So she's always either wrong or knocked out. And now she seems to be heading towards the final stage (before dying) of such character - turning evil.

Because this is usual fate of any such character with special powers. Since the expectations built for them are so high they cannot be good because if they were the good side would win too easily so they have to turn evil. And then our protagonist can fight against their superior power and live through angst of having their loved one turn evil. Of course they go back to good just a moment before dying. This way we can go back to the beginning when the existence of that character was all about being a motivation for protagonist. More comfortable this way.

All this is no fault of the character. It's the writing that's at fault. And it pisses me off. This is why I hated Neal's story on OUaT - he was a driving plot for Gold and Emma when he was an idea but they had no idea how to work him in as a character. This is what all the special kids suffer from when they grow up in shows that started being about their parents - I'm still angry about Isabelle Tyler even after all these years. And the faults in writing make the fandom hate those characters and, because I'm contrary by nature, this is why I love them. Even though it sets me up for failure because they always die.

There is also the fact that they are almost always female and almost always in relationship with the protagonist and fandom already has a different OTP so the amount of hate just piles up higher and higher. Everyone just calls for them to die. Even the official reviews of big SFF sites are full of "Katrina is stupid and useless" (even when she was let to finally be right about Henry and and Orion and it doesn't help because her existence means Abbie/Ichabod is not happening) and calls for killing her. And producers will finally listen. This is how the cycle of hate works. Fandom hates the character so she gets killed off and then fandom bemoans there are so little female characters and that they keep getting killed off and round and round we go. Is it really so hard to focus that hate not on the character but on the writers? Make them look for better plots.

I want those characters to succeed in their new roles. I want their goals to actually turn out to be worthy of pursuing. I want them to be right and competent and have their own storyline. I want them to be written better. There is no reason why they could give Katrina possibilities to actually do something useful and work with the rest of the characters effectively. She could be the team's Willow. She could be awesome. There is nothing horrible at allowing characters other than the main protagonist to be competent. Look at integration of Shaw and Root into the team on PoI and they have much more overlapping skills with the initial protagonists than Katrina. There is nothing that stops her from being someone we love. Except for shoddy writing.

I still haven't even been able to go through the first episode of Star-Crossed. The romance is plot horribly cliché, the actors look even more too old for high school then usual and frankly the whole premise is so heavy handed and ridiculous and I just can't take it. I usually try to watch at least a pilot episode of sf&f shows but I couldn't get through this one (and I managed to get through 3 episodes of Helix).

I liked The 100 more then I expected too. I liked the kids or at least most of the ones that have speaking roles (including the dead one). They are still mostly bunch of stereotypes (especially the one that the actor who plays Julian on Continuum is too much like Julian) but there is potential there. The really interesting part is back in space and they got a lot of recognisable faces to play the adults and I want to see more of that (also this is the most sf part). It had adventure and science fiction and beginnings of story arc that seems interesting enough that I want to see what happens next. I like it so far and I think it has potential.

I think Resurrection is OK but I saw The Returned and it's just not it. It just doesn't have the same emotional weight and isn't as engaging. I know that the origin of both series is different but the premise is so similar it's hard to avoid comparisons. And, although I had some problems with some pretty stupid behaviours of people in The Returned, the Resurrection just makes the same things simply boring. It might because they are planning to stretch this into more episodes or it might be because it's American network show and therefore it has to be more family friendly but I just don't feel it. I mean it's OK but it just feels forgettable - I can only barely recall what happened in last episode except that the mom of the doctor character is unsurprisingly alive. I hope they'll do something more interesting than the cgi dust next.

It surprised me how much better I like Once Upon a Time in Wonderland now that the tragic love part become about Will and Anastasia. Knave was my (and everyone's) favourite from the beginning but now I've fallen for the Red Queen too. Because she is selfish and gave up on her true love for the easy life and because she is weak and she couldn't resist Jabberwocky's torture because not everyone have to be always true and unbeatable and all of this just makes her more sincere. Because she is determined, brave and doesn't give up even when odds are overwhelming and she is terrified and everyone hates her. I don't want her to be dead. I love Ana and Will's backstory and the longing and regret and sadness is resonating so much more than with the Alice/Cyrus love story they tried to sell to us for the first half of the season. Maybe it's because I got to know them first before I was told about that great love story. Maybe because I was sold slowly on it. I'm not sure but it just works for me. And now that the focus shifted to Ana/Will relationship I actually started to like Cyrus and Alice/Cyrus. He started to have a personality that's actually kind of charming and their relationship is finally fun to watch.

Person of Interest is right now the best part of my week. Especially when the episode includes the return of Root. And she's a cyborg now (it's not a full DNI but it's getting there) - a true analog interface - and it looks like Machine manage to teach her the value of human life (at least just a little bit). I love the puzzle cons she does with Machine (the whole thing with prison transport break just to get a note and the dinosaur tip were pure awesome). But the best part, of course, was when she was flirting with Shaw again - "I couldn't make you look bad even if I tried", "I love it when you play doctor" - she calls John Harold's monkey but Shaw is always Shaw. And Shaw ate that bar. And to think it started with an iron. I rarely ship people so hard but I'm also happy with innuendo, violence and saving the world together. I always knew that Samaritan will come online - none of the threats like this in TV series ever gets stopped - we have to see what happens or it doesn't count. So I'm most interested about confrontation between the human network Root builds and Machine with Decima and Samaritan. Will they free Samaritan, too?

The writers of OUaT are still geeking out over getting their hands on Star Wars. In many ways that was the best part of the episode (well, the 2 last episodes). Since everybody had guessed the big reveal long, long time ago (Neal = Bae and even Bae = Peter Pan which almost got confirmed too) that felt like a relief not a surprise (good thing Neal and Henry were kind of adorable together or it'd also be boring). Everything else was just awful. It was like a full list of all the bad choices from all the stories - from Rumpelstilskin falling for the prophecy thing (it only came true because of what he did to avoid it) to Snow giving up the dagger (from beginning to end this was so predictable - getting Gold to say where it is, the hostage situation and killing Johanna). It was painful to watch (and that's even without the way they lost Hook - letting him run away when he could barely walk and then just run around stealing hooks and boats). I just hope that something interesting will come out of the Snow being less forgiving. I also am waiting for more backstory between Cora and Eva. And I hope for Bailey Madison because she's amazing as little Snow. Still, OUaT is something I actually wait and feel excited for so I hope they'll get a little less groany.

I tried to watch The Cult but it's so disjointed and uninteresting. It's even less interesting then The Cult show within the show and that's bad as that show within the show just doesn't seem like something anyone would care about, not to mention kidnap and kill (themselves and others) for. I couldn't believe they could make a conspiracy/obsession even less plausible then The Following but they managed somehow. And I stopped watching The Following because it was boring and it creeped me out (amount of violence against women and the glorification of its perpetrators is just seriously messed up). I wanted to like it (I waited till I saw the second episode to decide) but I just can't. I hope the other O'Bannon's show is going to be better.

I didn't even try Zero Hour. Just like Do No Harm it just seemed to awful to even consider. The premises of both seemed ridiculous and I wasn't surprised they are both dead after just a couple of episodes. I'm glad, however, that I didn't start watching.

I started to watch Touch again. Unfortunately, they tried to fix it (get higher ratings) by removing all that I liked about it (same thing happened to Harry's Law last year). I never really found the conspiracy/ metaphysics around Jake too compelling but I loved the interconnected stories from around the globe (and Gugu Mbatha-Raw). But I suppose subtitles were killing the show (they use every excuse to switch to English now) and I have unpopular tastes. Anyway, the current concentration on conspiracy plots doesn't seem to do the show any good, anyway.

At least Nikita keeps being fun. Although, I miss female interactions. I mean, I like all the couples on the show and I ship them but getting them together really lowered show's Bechdel scores and I hope this is temporary. I also found Russian heiress going undercover in the FBI headquarters hilarious (but I loved seeing Nikita and Alex on a mission together). But I love the action and drama and characters interactions (even the evil ones). The Ari episode was certainly fun and it reminded me how much I like Peter Outerbridge. I almost feel bad that he keeps playing bad guys now. I miss the time when he was David Sandstrom and Ellen Page was his daughter and he brought some almost realistic science to TV. I hope they'll get renewed (it seems likely as they doing better then last season and a lot of new CW shows are failing). Still, I was disappointed when Arrow renewal got confirmed and not Nikita. I do watch Arrow but it's more for cameos from every popular sf show ever (Crichton, Baltar and Tory and of course Captain Jack are my favourites).

I was afraid Fringe would devolve into silly treasure hunt but they do not seem to really care about that. Instead they just hit you where it hurts. I didn't expect them to kill off Etta last week. Or at least not so soon. She was awesome and competent and she never gave up. This made my conviction that the solution to Observer invasion will involve time travel and resetting the Universe (again) even stronger (I though it from the first time we saw the invasion last season). After this week episode I'm even more convinced of that. I think that - one - Observers' future is so devastated one more black hole means nothing - two - but that time wormhole will let our heroes go and stop Observers. In other news - Peter is becoming an Observer! And it was just a con stunt! Now that promo reminded me of the Dark City.

Haven really got the fandom railed with the Friday episode. The way they love to stir the shipping wars and keep all the ships alive and kicking makes me LOL. Sweet. Obviously Nathan will be brought back to life so I'm not to worried about that. I was more shocked by the fact that Colorado Kid was Sara's child.

I was expecting Tommy to either work for or be the bolt gun killer after that first episode. However, now I think it isn't Tommy. The real Tommy died in that motel room and the killer shapeshifted into him and took his place. That's why he change his mind and stayed.

My other unfounded speculation (just from what I saw in the next week promo). Audrey doesn't say she always loved Nathan she says it to Colorado Kid. She doesn't shoot Claudia Black. James Cogan is the shapeshifter (his father trouble) and she shoots him. Lets see next week how close to the truth I get.

Once Upon the Time was full of revelations too. Family revelations. We finally know who is Henry's father. We finally got Emma's flashback (I liked how this time present action was fairytale land and flashbacks were real world). We know what happened - how they met, why she went to jail, why he left her, why she is so distrusting. So many explanations. Now, I just want them to tell us Charming's name. Only mister Booth became somewhat creepy stoker or maybe Rumpel light - manipulating people's lives for his own goal. I wonder what he used to have in that box to make Neal go with the whole plan. And what about that dream?

Somehow I noticed a common theme in this week's genre shows but it's all very spoilery.

Fringe suddenly skipped to the future where the Observers took over the world (worlds?). On the bright side Nina looked cool in White hair. John Noble was wonderful both as lunatic and as genius in almost Doctor Who way. CGI Leonard Nimoy was almost almost realistic and the had thing was funny.

On the other side the future was almost a parody of Nazi occupied France. And the Observers are so horrible and they kill people and they all are men so they want our prostitutes for themselves. In even more creepy then usual as it has extra level of sleeping with your grandmother. Not to mention killing your ancestors seem like a quick way to extinction so where is their Paradox Machine?

It was pretty obvious why they hired pale, blond Australian that looks just like Anna Torv. I guest who were her parents almost instantly and the switching genders but keeping the name was almost overboard (that belongs to most convenient superpower). Only thing that makes it better was that she and her partner were kind of cool together.

I once again couldn't help but notice that Peter has a role that is usually reserved for female heroes - his destiny is to have a special kid. The fact that he's a guy makes it almost bearable. However, I thought that his kid was to bring about the Observer future. That the whole thing about child of two Universes was so important September almost killed him by screwing up the cure and had to fix his mistake. It's makes less and less sense as we go on.

The whole episode was made form clichés bound together by Walter glue.

In other weekend show all about lost parents we learned what happened to the Rumpelstiltskin's son and how that relates to the curse. He was last good thing in Rumpel's life but also the reason he became the monster. So he blamed himself as dark magic consumed his father. All the deaths and paranoia and the fear of everyone around him and he still tried to save his father. He tried to find a way out that didn't involve killing him. A way to another world where there is no magic so magic can has no power over his father. And Rumpel, the coward he always was, chickens out.

This is however where his backstory is more sympathetic then Regina's (and I'm a little pissed at that so I hope the final confrontation about Henry will humanise her again). His reason for creating the curse is to go after his son. He used Regina's need for revenge and manipulated her to kill her own father. So, no I don't think he is a better person, but his quest is not as petty as hating a kid for getting fooled by a skilled manipulator. Still, just like her obsession with revenge, his leads to destroying everything around him. Including his love.

So, as it seems, the Fairyland has plenty of lost sons and no wonder Mr. Gold mistook August W. Booth for his. I think we can now safely assume he is Geppeto's. I also think that this means Rumpelstiltskin's son is Henry's father (you just know it has to be).

PS Nikita disappointed me this week so no more about it.

First a bit about Once Upon A Time.

( Spoilers for Once Upon a Time )

In other genre TV. Grimm got more interesting - I loved Amy Acker on it (she's becoming female version of Mark Sheppard fast :). And Sasha Roiz's Captain Renard makes the show but the main character is still lacking and the show is missing female characters badly.

Alcatraz got so boring I couldn't make it through even one episode today. I'd rather watch Terra Nova.