bop_radar | Squeeing my way into 2007...

So I've been on vacation mode and consequently have spent more than a normal amount of time in front of my ibook screen. Some of it was fannish catch-up; passing thoughts on various things cut-tagged below.

Peter was more bearable on second viewing, knowing that his plot goes somewhere. Mohinder was far less bearable knowing that his plot goes nowhere. Apparently I am intolerant of pointlessness. *g* Simone remains a very poorly written and implausible character, imo. I found myself enjoying Audrey and Matt more and Nikki a hell of a lot less. Rewatch only confirmed my opinion of her as a useless mother and a weak idiot. I really liked revisiting the scene where she visits DL's mother, since DL's mum tells it like it is: DL's a good guy and if he had access to 2 million, he'd have whisked his kid off to a heavenly life a long time before now.

I watched with a friend who warmed to Peter instantly and hated on Nathan. There was a lot of exclaiming and gesticulating at the screen about how Nathan was an unbearable asshole. It was most entertaining. *smug* She was getting sucked in by the end. ;-) Otherwise my reactions remained the same, but I picked up a lot more detail on rewatch and a lot of moments had far more resonance.

So, I've been meaning to put in the time with this show for some time, and yesterday I finally got a block of time to watch the first five eps. I'm hooked. But I'm still at the stage of finding it slightly odd that I'm hooked because there are a LOT of things that make me uncomfortable about this show. Firstly I don't really understand sports mentality. I especially don't understand how someone screaming in your face and telling you you don't deserve shit is a motivator to anyone. *scratches head* My reaction to someone yelling at me to do something is almost invariably a quiet 'no, fuck you very much' and instantly removing myself from the situation. So it's really hard for me to understand why these guys remain on the team. I keep reminding myself to 'factor in testosterone' to myself as I watch.

I don't really like any of the characters. Not completely. My favourites are probably the coach's family, the paralysed guy (simply because he hasn't done anything really horrible), the new Quarterback (gotta love an underdog) and (bizarrely) paralysed guy's best friend of extreme broodiness simply because he's so very hilariously fucked up. Everyone else increasingly annoys me--but in a very 'I must keep watching because you frustrate me so much I can't leave it hanging' kind of way. I especially hate the peppy cheerleader girl.

Other than that, my main reaction to the show so far has been overwhelming sadness. I'm not sure if this is intentional within the show or not, but I find it all so sad and bleak--this wasteland of a town and all these sad little people with their limited little lives. Imagine the best thing in your life being football! *shudders* And the religiousness squicks me out too and makes me even sadder for them--they are so desperate to believe that there's some meaning in their lives when clearly there is not. And a lot of the plots so far seem to be about extreme dysfunction with not even the glimmer of hope that things will improve. So it makes me very sad, and this seems at odds with the 'struggle against the odds' plot arc of the team rebuilding the season. But it does make it a whole lot more realistic and therefore at worst bearable, at best fascinating.

Hmmm. So, this show is very well made and I'm mesmerised by the performance of the lead actor, but serial killers are not really my thing. It's squicking me out but not in the way I expected it to. The whole 'serial killer with standards/as dispenser of justice' thing is interesting conceptual ground to cover. And Dexter is certainly fascinating and amusing--his self-awareness sells the character very well. However, I find myself very uncomfortable when Dexter's self-awareness falters. His relationship with his girlfriend is particularly hideous to me. So it's not the killing itself that squicks me out, so much as the deceit (and abuse) necessary to cover up his own peculiarities and pass as a 'normal' person. His relationship with his sister seems to have a core of genuine affection to it, whereas his relationship with his girlfriend is wholly repulsive to me--at least it seems so so far.

I imagine I'll watch a bit more, partly for the great performance, partly for curiosity, and partly because I like the character of Dexter's sister a lot. I hope we get more development for Deb. It's very early, so this show could hook me in despite the squicky, or it could trail off into something I'm not that interested in--not sure yet.

This has been wonderful holiday reading for me. It's been a long time since I first tackled this series, and I'm now reading on further than I have before. I'm somewhere in the middle of A Storm of Swords now, and thoroughly hooked (though I still recall

supacat's warnings about book 4). For now, I find myself enjoying most of the plots, though Jaime, Arya and Tyrion's sections are usually the most fascinating. Daenerys is interesting as well, but sometimes the politics of her plot get a bit tedious. Davos bored me a great deal until he was made Stannis's Hand--now that set-up intrigues me a little more. Jaime is probably the most intriguing character of all and I found myself totally sucked in by his plot in the first half of book 3--his absence in Book 2 was very powerful as well--the way other characters responded to him as a concept rather than his presence. Arya is my second favourite but I have no idea where her plot will go now that she's been revealed as a Stark again. The supernatural elements are intriguing me more than they did on first reading, if my foggy recollections are accurate. The most successful thing about the series for me so far is the way Martin shows characters caught up in a whirlwind of events beyond their control--twists in destiny that none could have predicted and seeing how they cope with that. Must. Read. More.

But there is so much more to watch and read! *stares at pile of DVDs and books accumulated over the Christmas break*

Current Mood: lethargic
Current Location: work (sadly)
Current Music: In the morning, The Coral