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The "Bad Romance" performance blew my fucking mind. It was a shining moment of glory in a sea of discomfitting wtf, although I still find it problematic that Kurt is constantly numbered among "the girls." Seriously, let's maybe try not to perpetuate the stereotype that gay men are really women- but I suppose asking Glee to not perpetuate stereotypes would be like asking Fox News to offer actual fair and balanced reporting.
And I did enjoy the moral lessons of the episode- "Hate speech is bad! We're all freaks together!"- for all that they were delivered with the grace and subtlety of a brick to the face. No comment was made on the fact that Kurt's behavior towards Finn throughout the show has been pretty reprehensible, though- he's been manipulative and offputtingly creepy for episodes and episodes, and when Finn finally blows up about it, it gets ignored. I did like that they managed to reconcile at the end, and that said reconciliation involved Finn in a floor length red rubber dress, however. But it's hard not to enjoy Finn in a dress.
I might have been able to forgive the show for Rachel's search for her mother if we'd ever, in the entirety of the season, seen either of her dads. But no. Instead, even though Rachel has been doing musical theater and pageants and suchlike since before she could walk, we are asked to believe that suddenly- suddenly! after she was designing costumes for the Glee Club in earlier episodes!- neither she nor her dads can sew her a Lady Gaga outfit, and she has to come to school looking sad and bereft in a dress made of stapled together Beanie Babies. Because men can't sew, you see, and Rachel can't learn to sew without a mother, because obviously all moms know how to sew. They're women! The ability to operate a sewing machine is part of their hardwired maternal instinct!
Ugh. So much ugh. And even though, taken out of context, the Poker Face duet was really amazing, in context, it was really really inappropriate and uncomfortable to watch.
Only the barest mention of Jesse; no mention at all of the fact that Puck and Mercedes were (are? did they break up?) dating. Very little Will, for which I am every and always grateful. In sum, it could have been much worse- as always, when the show does things well, it does them very well. But when it misses, it misses hard, and I keep seeing glimpses of the amazing show it could be. And that's deeply frustrating.
Chuck!
You know, just when I thought I was going to get the wacky spy shennanigans I've been hoping for, the finale hits and things go to shit again. I liked it when Chuck was happy, damnit!
I'm glad Ellie finally knows the truth; I really wish she weren't the one telling Chuck he has to stop being a spy. That's a behavior that always, always, always raises my hackles. People are individuals, and they are allowed to make their own choices, however stupid and dangerous they may be. Ellie doesn't get to decide whether or not Chuck is allowed to risk his life doing good- even if she is his sister, even if she does feel like it's her responsibility to take care of him. It's not her call.
On the other hand, damn, but Ellie has the right to be pissed off at everyone around her for keeping her in the dark for so long. The show keeps doing this thing where people- mostly Ellie and Sarah, actually, which is another point of irritation for me- aren't given important information, and their lack of information leads to bad things happening. Chuck doesn't tell Sarah that the Intercept is frying his brain, and they get blindsided at the CIA hearing. Ellie doesn't know that Chuck is a spy and she gets roped into a Ring scheme because of it. I'd hoped, what with Chuck and Sarah finally getting together, that Chuck would stop being such an asshat about open communication- but no. No, he's going to continue to hide things from her because he doesn't want to hurt her, even though THAT NEVER WORKS.
I did like that Sarah got a moment of awesome at the end, when she freed herself from the handcuffs just in time to bash Shaw over the head. That was lovely. There were, in fact, a lot of lovely, awesome moments in the finale- as much as I prefer wacky hijinx to serious business, when the show actually gets off its ass and moves forward, it can be a seriously engaging, enjoyable experience.
Three seasons is too long for a show to be constantly struggling with finding a consistent tone, though. The final fight scene with Shaw encapsulates this for me- you have this incredibly tense, serious moment, with Chuck finally facing down his nemesis. He's the underdog in the fight- he's suffered incredible losses, he's injured, he can't access all of his skills properly. And then he bumps into the DVD player and and Jeff and Lester's music video starts playing on every screen in the Buy More, and suddenly it's hard to tell if this is supposed to be a boss battle or a total farce.
The part where Morgan breaks his own thumbs to get out of a pair of handcuffs, only to have his broken thumbs be played for a laugh later on, is another example. The show changes mood fast enough to give you whiplash, and the lack of balance between the serious and the silly is occasionally really, really unsettling.
Doctor Who!
Is it weird that I kind of miss RTD's penchant for sacrificing logic in favor of manipulative emotional payoff? Every single episode of the new season has been extraordinarily anticlimactic in some way or another. I'm glad to finally have a Doctor who is mostly free of angst, and I adore Amy to pieces, but I didn't start to feel really invested in either of them as characters until episode seven- and there are huge things about "Amy's Choice" that I didn't like at all (can we please stop telling the companions that they have to choose between fantastic adventure and utter boredom? pretty please?), but by the end of it I was finally buying into Matt Smith as the Doctor and Amy and Rory as companions.
Even episode seven had a bit of an anticlimactic ending, though- when the Doctor just casually mentions that, "Oh, right, the Dream Lord was me, sorry, didn't you catch that?" it made me want to reach through the screen and throttle him. Sometimes it's okay to have a big reveal! Really! I know that the Dream Lord wasn't really the point of the episode, he was just the medium through which we got to explore Amy's conflicted feelings, but even so- there was an opportunity for a nice dramatic moment there, and it was flubbed.
It's not like we're sacrificing emotional engagement for sense and logic, either. I did spend most of the Weeping Angel two-parter whimpering in terror, but that's because I'm a bit of a pansy and I was watching it alone in the house at night. And all that terror was utterly wasted when I had to take a moment to yell at my screen over the whole "Walk like you can see!" part. I mean, really? Really? Are these the Weeping Angels who flunked out of their remedial lessons in eating people? "Blink" built up this creepy, incredible mythology for the Weeping Angels, and then so much of that groundwork was just trampled over in S5.
I do like River Song, though. I don't care if she's a bit of a Mary Sue- too many characters end up looking like bumbling fools next to the Doctor, and it's nice to see him get a taste of his own medicine on occasion. I imagine it will eventually be revealed that the man she killed was, in fact, the Doctor; I'm actually looking forward to seeing how her plotline plays out in the future. (Also, the parking break. How could I not love her, after the parking break?)
I'm less than impressed with the crack in time as an overarching plot thread, but this may be because I am irrationally resentful towards it for what happened to Rory at the end of episode 9. (The Tardis is so much more fun when there are three people in it! *cries*) I am also less than impressed by what feels like a marked decrease in the number of minority characters; I'm not sure if I'm just imagining that or what, though.
Overall, I am pleased! I like Amy, and I think once Matt Smith gets really comfortable in the role of the Doctor, he'll be awesome. Will I always like S1 best of all? Probably! But that's okay. I have forgiven the show for the sins of S4, and I'm looking forward to the rest of this season.
I keep randomly Capitalizing things.
RORY! I am holding out for "He gets written back in and S6 is 11/Amy/RoryintheTARDIS" because the alternative ... doesn't really feel right. Moffat is the guy who gave us "Everybody lives, Rose!" And, okay, it was also, "just this once," but ... yeah. Also, I feel like there's weaponry on the wall suggesting that if history can be unwritten, it can be written again.
(If I were counting on hands, I would be dropping things by now.) I also really hope that Karen G. AND Matt S. stick around for another season. I appreciate why we've had the cast changes we have, but honestly, I keep meeting these people and then they look into the Time Vortex or left behind or drop into another universe or have a really shitty year or GET MIND WIPED just as I'm starting to like them, and then I have to meet new people. It's exhausting!
Re: I keep randomly Capitalizing things.
If Rory doesn't come back I will be so upset- giving a major character a death scene that anticlimactic is criminal. But yeah, that whole history being unwritten and rewritten thing does seem to imply that he'll be coming back. (The weaponry on the wall is probably a banana.)
It would be lovely if the Doctor could keep a companion for more than two seasons. I swear, he goes through them like a five year old goes through goldfish, and that's really not a track record to be proud of.
no subject
Concur on the mothers & sewing machine aspect.
And SO MUCH CONCUR on Kurt being "manipulative and offputtingly creepy". Kurt's father coming in at That Moment and delivering that speech to poor Finn (whose mother should be SHOT for how she handled the moving in issue) made me irritated, though the red rubber dress made me die of lols, despite the bad plot used to get us there.
no subject
The red rubber dress is love, though, despite all the wtfery. XD
no subject
Yeah, I despise Kurt as Queen Bitch. It's annoying when anyone is 2d'd that badly. And Finn's mother makes me very sad.