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shadowkatJust finished watching Episode 1.3 of The Last of Us - the Last of Us kind of reminds me of Station Eleven at times, or what would happen if someone melded Station Eleven with the Walking Dead or Zombieland or The Passage?
Still sticking closely to the trope - the old guy, young girl traveling through an apocalyptic landscape, and the nutty people they run across along the way. I don't know how many of you are familiar with this particular trope? I've run across it a lot - it's very popular in dystopian fiction, horror, and well comic books. Very popular in comic books. The film Logan kind of did it, and Wolverine comics do it a lot.
Last of Us, the way it's set up, is very similar to the comic version of The Watchmen, also Citizen Kane, and Station Eleven (also the television series Lost), in which little short self-contained short stories are kind of told within the main thematic arc. It's not an anthology style, the short story pertains to the actual through thread not just the theme, and lends itself to the plot and character arcs. You could legitmately watch it on its own, but it really works better with the whole series. Station Eleven, Game of Thrones and Lost played with this narrative style as well. To date - I found Station Eleven to be the most interesting and innovative regarding it - Station Eleven feels like a puzzle box or like opening one of those Russian Doll sets.
As the critic Alan Sepinwall pointed out to me, when I had no idea what everyone was talking about in regards to Episode 3, this is an old narrative style or gimmick. He's right it is. I've seen it a lot too.
If you loved Episode 3? You really should go watch Station Eleven. (Although I guess it depends on why you loved Episode 3?) I'm guessing Episode 3 surprised a lot of folks who thought they were going to get something more in line with the Walking Dead or a video game? I wasn't surprised, but that's because this reminds me more of Station Eleven in how its narratively constructed and less like the Walking Dead. The focus here really isn't on the diseased or infected, its on those who survived (hence the title The Last of Us, while the focus in The Walking Dead, World War Z, Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead and 28 Days Later was well on the zombies or dead menace and trying to avoid joining them.) And they've been doing little flashback stories about various people along the way, with Elle and Joel as the connector. It may have helped that I watched Station Eleven first? Also have seen The Passage, which tried a similar set up and failed at it miserably - but it was also on network television, this is on HBO.
Plus all those comic books - which do this a lot. And well, Lost.
It's hard to shock or surprise me. I'm a jaded culture junkie.
I remember thinking while watchingMichael Shannon Nick Offerman (they look alike to me) play survivalist, "Why are people on social media so in love with this episode?" Then the other guy showed up. And I thought, "is there a sweet homosexual romance in here, is that why?" And when it happened. "Oh, there it is."
I'm thinking the internet is deprived of LGBTA romances?
That's not to say it wasn't lovely and sweet, it was. I did get bored in the middle and somewhat distracted. But this was partly due to the fact that my blood sugar has been flucating wildly all day long, and I felt a bit ill. And I admittedly would much prefer to watch two men fall in love than zombies. Also risky for an HBO zombie series based on a video game.
(Did the video game do it? I can't really see it doing that...)
I particularly liked the shout out to Linda Rondstadt, and ending with her song.
Plus it was well told (for the most part - drug a bit in the middle). They set it up well - Shannon's character, Bill, is a recluse and survivalist who doesn't like people. The kind of guy who either doesn't vote or voted for Trump, has his own arsenal, and believes in anarchy, because the government and corporations are clearly evil. He's build a fortress around himself, complete with a electrified gate, and booby traps. So none of the infected can get within fifty yards of his house or anywhere else in town.
Plus he has area video cameras set up to watch out for them.
One day, a traveler (male and the same age as Bill) stumbles into one of his traps. Bill after figuring out the guy is sane, not out to get him, and not infected, lets him out. The guy talks Bill into fixing him dinner, and letting him stay the night at least. And well, they have an awkward romance between two middle-aged white guys with beards. With Linda Rondstadt's "Love will Abide" as their song. Somewhere along the way, the other guy makes contact with Tess on the radio - and Tess and Joel visit them, and they have dinner - with a begruding Bill. Frank (that's the other guy's name) is thrilled and had talked him into it.
Anyhow...time passes, and in 2023, these two are doddering old men. Frank has some sort of ailment, and they enter into a suicide pact, where Frank commits suicide by pills, and Bill decides all on his own to do it two.
They go to bed. Fall asleep and don't wake up.
If this had been the Walking Dead? Bill would have eaten Frank for dinner.
Or they'd have been infected by the diseased. (I realized right off - they weren't going that route, thank god. I'm thinking television writers have gotten tired of shocking or horrifying the audience.)
The point of this sweet little love story - is to get to jaded Joel, who has sealed off his heart. Bill leaves a letter that basically tells Joel that they are alike, and he was like Joel, he didn't like people that much and was glad everyone died, until he met Frank - and fell in love, and his purpose became protecting and safe-guarding Frank. That people like himself and Joel are put on the earth to protect others like Frank from harm. Basically it's reasserting Tess's edict from the previous episode that Joel must protect Ellie at all costs. (Yeah, yeah, writers we get it.)
Also, that no matter what is lost..."love will abide".
Again, it reminded me a lot of Station Eleven. There is a zombie in the episode - at the beginning, it's there to show Ellie's lack of fear and curiosity. She goes up to it and examines it. It's still alive, just trapped under lots of rubble. I thought Zombie looked a bit like Frank, so I was confused for a little bit. And Joel leads her to a graveyard - of people who were killed by the government merely because they didn't know where to put them (there wasn't enough room for them in the Q Zones.) The assumption that writers have that our government would do this kind of annoys me. Not that they necessarily wouldn't, but we don't really know. It could go either way. Constantly stating they will do it - kind of promotes anarchy and distrust of the government, and well what happened in the 2016 election. I'm not sure that's the best choice? There's this tendency to go a dystopian route in fiction, few go the opposite.
Part of the reason that Frank and Bill's story is ...enjoyable and refreshing is it comes in the middle of all of this cynicism and nihilism. We're shown how horrible humanity is - and then, we see the loving relationship of Frank and Bill. Granted it's just Frank and Bill, with possibly Joel and Tess allowed to be within it. (We also see how close Joel and Tess truly were - and how big a loss Tess is to Joel, who didn't have the same advantage Bill does - in just leaving with her.)
It's kind of an on-going theme in horror and dystopian fiction - that no matter how bad things get, romantic love, love of a child, friendship, or even a pet will abide. We see it in pretty much all of the fiction, whether it be the Old Western Tropes of yesteryear (and last year), or science fiction of tomorrow, or just the war torn stories of today. It's a hopeful message. No matter how hellish it becomes, as long as love exists - life is worth living. ie. All you need is love...like the Beatles song or "Love will Abide, as Rondstadt sings over a cassette tape in the beaten up truck that Joel and Ellie leave in.
A nice breather or reminder of what humanity can be like, before we see them at their worst all over again. It's par for the course for these shows, the writers need to remind the audience that humanity is worth saving so they'll stick around and root for the characters, before putting them through hell again.
[ETA: Forgot to mention - they do an interesting job of explaining the infection. In this one - it's no mystery how it infected everyone. The food got tainted - the fungus grew in the flour, in cereal, pancakes, bread, etc, and people ate enough of it - they got sick. Remember the first episode - they were making pancakes, and had burned them. And the old woman was eating cookies - which were pre-made and processed (so processed foods). So each person got sick from the food they were eating, then they bit people and passed the infection. It had started in a food processing plant in Indonesia. Also this syncs with information over the years about candida and other fungi growing in the gut and how this effects the brain and can cause various disorders. The trick with science fiction - is to steal just enough real information to make the set-up plausible. The cross-breading and over-processing of grains, and other items, makes it harder to digest, people get sick....anyhow, I found the explanation interesting. And far more believable than other zombie and vampire films. Although, ironically? COVID most likely came from a monkey or an animal - and mutated from that.]
****
Ah, blood sugar has balanced out finally. I no longer feel woozy. Note to self - be careful with the sugar intake.
Other Television Shows
1. Company You Keep
The second episode was even better than the first, mainly because we saw more of the supporting characters. It works - we got Fichter's Dad, and Polly Draper's Mom, plus Milo V (This is Us, Gilmore Girls) as the male lead (and he has a lot of charisma) and the female lead works as well (also she's Asian with a rich Asian family, knee deep in politics, which goes against the stereotype.)
She's a con artist (in a way) and so is he. They both lie for a living. The difference between them is she lies to her family, and everyone but the people she works with. He lies to everyone outside of his family.
It's working at any rate.
[Television still has the annoying wave, which I often forget about if I get engrossed in the show - I forgot about it in The Last of Us for example]
2 Picard S3 Episode 3 - Eh, it works and it doesn't work. They've made the stodgy decision of having the old Dominion Changling's from DS9 as the bad guys. Honestly I wish they'd come up with new bad guys. I rather liked S1, which kind of did? Also, I was reminded of why Beverly Crusher always annoyed me in the series - she makes decisions for everyone, and thinks she knows everything. I always wanted to smack her. Also she gets very condescending. Jean-Luc works better with Laris, who listens to him and doesn't criticize quite so much.
Ryker, I felt sorry for, and actually liked a great deal - because he's finally calling Jean-Luc on his bad decisions, and reckless disregard for the safety of the crew. Jean-Luc was a more intelligent version of Kirk at times.
I also like Jake Crusher. The actor is charismatic and appealing. The Worf and Raffi pairing works - takes the edge off of Worf. Also nice switch, having Worf be the calm and rational one, and Raffi being all over the place. Meanwhile Seven works very well paired with Jake Crusher.
So I liked the characters. The plot...I'm on the fence about. There's a reason I didn't stick with DS9, and the Dominion plot line was part of it.
3. True Lies
It's okay. I like the female lead, and her role. The guy is kind of just there and fairly bland. They went for someone who kind of resembled Arnold Swazzernegger - or rather a version without the muscles and bulk. I found it hard to believe this guy was recruited to be a spy, and his wife hadn't been recruited, but that's just me.
It's based on the original film, albeit updated a bit. We have two kids not just one. (In the original there was one - who was played by Eliza Dusku, and Eliza was molested on the set, apparently - which has forever tainted that film...but that's another story). The wife isn't having an affair or doing a weird side gig with some guy who is scamming her. (A side plot line that worked in the 1990s, but does not work now.) It's less sexist than the original.
I may stick with it for a bit. Just to see where it goes. Also, I always thought that movie would work well as a series - it's set up as one.
(CBS on Wed's - I think).
4. Astrid - PBS (this is a French Detective Series made in partnership with the BBC).
Astrid is an autistic woman who gets involved with a police detective (commander) and helps her solve crimes. They have an off-beat friendship, and the mysteries are interesting. As is Astrid - who can figure things out logically.
Okay, off to bed.
Still sticking closely to the trope - the old guy, young girl traveling through an apocalyptic landscape, and the nutty people they run across along the way. I don't know how many of you are familiar with this particular trope? I've run across it a lot - it's very popular in dystopian fiction, horror, and well comic books. Very popular in comic books. The film Logan kind of did it, and Wolverine comics do it a lot.
Last of Us, the way it's set up, is very similar to the comic version of The Watchmen, also Citizen Kane, and Station Eleven (also the television series Lost), in which little short self-contained short stories are kind of told within the main thematic arc. It's not an anthology style, the short story pertains to the actual through thread not just the theme, and lends itself to the plot and character arcs. You could legitmately watch it on its own, but it really works better with the whole series. Station Eleven, Game of Thrones and Lost played with this narrative style as well. To date - I found Station Eleven to be the most interesting and innovative regarding it - Station Eleven feels like a puzzle box or like opening one of those Russian Doll sets.
As the critic Alan Sepinwall pointed out to me, when I had no idea what everyone was talking about in regards to Episode 3, this is an old narrative style or gimmick. He's right it is. I've seen it a lot too.
If you loved Episode 3? You really should go watch Station Eleven. (Although I guess it depends on why you loved Episode 3?) I'm guessing Episode 3 surprised a lot of folks who thought they were going to get something more in line with the Walking Dead or a video game? I wasn't surprised, but that's because this reminds me more of Station Eleven in how its narratively constructed and less like the Walking Dead. The focus here really isn't on the diseased or infected, its on those who survived (hence the title The Last of Us, while the focus in The Walking Dead, World War Z, Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead and 28 Days Later was well on the zombies or dead menace and trying to avoid joining them.) And they've been doing little flashback stories about various people along the way, with Elle and Joel as the connector. It may have helped that I watched Station Eleven first? Also have seen The Passage, which tried a similar set up and failed at it miserably - but it was also on network television, this is on HBO.
Plus all those comic books - which do this a lot. And well, Lost.
It's hard to shock or surprise me. I'm a jaded culture junkie.
I remember thinking while watching
I'm thinking the internet is deprived of LGBTA romances?
That's not to say it wasn't lovely and sweet, it was. I did get bored in the middle and somewhat distracted. But this was partly due to the fact that my blood sugar has been flucating wildly all day long, and I felt a bit ill. And I admittedly would much prefer to watch two men fall in love than zombies. Also risky for an HBO zombie series based on a video game.
(Did the video game do it? I can't really see it doing that...)
I particularly liked the shout out to Linda Rondstadt, and ending with her song.
Plus it was well told (for the most part - drug a bit in the middle). They set it up well - Shannon's character, Bill, is a recluse and survivalist who doesn't like people. The kind of guy who either doesn't vote or voted for Trump, has his own arsenal, and believes in anarchy, because the government and corporations are clearly evil. He's build a fortress around himself, complete with a electrified gate, and booby traps. So none of the infected can get within fifty yards of his house or anywhere else in town.
Plus he has area video cameras set up to watch out for them.
One day, a traveler (male and the same age as Bill) stumbles into one of his traps. Bill after figuring out the guy is sane, not out to get him, and not infected, lets him out. The guy talks Bill into fixing him dinner, and letting him stay the night at least. And well, they have an awkward romance between two middle-aged white guys with beards. With Linda Rondstadt's "Love will Abide" as their song. Somewhere along the way, the other guy makes contact with Tess on the radio - and Tess and Joel visit them, and they have dinner - with a begruding Bill. Frank (that's the other guy's name) is thrilled and had talked him into it.
Anyhow...time passes, and in 2023, these two are doddering old men. Frank has some sort of ailment, and they enter into a suicide pact, where Frank commits suicide by pills, and Bill decides all on his own to do it two.
They go to bed. Fall asleep and don't wake up.
If this had been the Walking Dead? Bill would have eaten Frank for dinner.
Or they'd have been infected by the diseased. (I realized right off - they weren't going that route, thank god. I'm thinking television writers have gotten tired of shocking or horrifying the audience.)
The point of this sweet little love story - is to get to jaded Joel, who has sealed off his heart. Bill leaves a letter that basically tells Joel that they are alike, and he was like Joel, he didn't like people that much and was glad everyone died, until he met Frank - and fell in love, and his purpose became protecting and safe-guarding Frank. That people like himself and Joel are put on the earth to protect others like Frank from harm. Basically it's reasserting Tess's edict from the previous episode that Joel must protect Ellie at all costs. (Yeah, yeah, writers we get it.)
Also, that no matter what is lost..."love will abide".
Again, it reminded me a lot of Station Eleven. There is a zombie in the episode - at the beginning, it's there to show Ellie's lack of fear and curiosity. She goes up to it and examines it. It's still alive, just trapped under lots of rubble. I thought Zombie looked a bit like Frank, so I was confused for a little bit. And Joel leads her to a graveyard - of people who were killed by the government merely because they didn't know where to put them (there wasn't enough room for them in the Q Zones.) The assumption that writers have that our government would do this kind of annoys me. Not that they necessarily wouldn't, but we don't really know. It could go either way. Constantly stating they will do it - kind of promotes anarchy and distrust of the government, and well what happened in the 2016 election. I'm not sure that's the best choice? There's this tendency to go a dystopian route in fiction, few go the opposite.
Part of the reason that Frank and Bill's story is ...enjoyable and refreshing is it comes in the middle of all of this cynicism and nihilism. We're shown how horrible humanity is - and then, we see the loving relationship of Frank and Bill. Granted it's just Frank and Bill, with possibly Joel and Tess allowed to be within it. (We also see how close Joel and Tess truly were - and how big a loss Tess is to Joel, who didn't have the same advantage Bill does - in just leaving with her.)
It's kind of an on-going theme in horror and dystopian fiction - that no matter how bad things get, romantic love, love of a child, friendship, or even a pet will abide. We see it in pretty much all of the fiction, whether it be the Old Western Tropes of yesteryear (and last year), or science fiction of tomorrow, or just the war torn stories of today. It's a hopeful message. No matter how hellish it becomes, as long as love exists - life is worth living. ie. All you need is love...like the Beatles song or "Love will Abide, as Rondstadt sings over a cassette tape in the beaten up truck that Joel and Ellie leave in.
A nice breather or reminder of what humanity can be like, before we see them at their worst all over again. It's par for the course for these shows, the writers need to remind the audience that humanity is worth saving so they'll stick around and root for the characters, before putting them through hell again.
[ETA: Forgot to mention - they do an interesting job of explaining the infection. In this one - it's no mystery how it infected everyone. The food got tainted - the fungus grew in the flour, in cereal, pancakes, bread, etc, and people ate enough of it - they got sick. Remember the first episode - they were making pancakes, and had burned them. And the old woman was eating cookies - which were pre-made and processed (so processed foods). So each person got sick from the food they were eating, then they bit people and passed the infection. It had started in a food processing plant in Indonesia. Also this syncs with information over the years about candida and other fungi growing in the gut and how this effects the brain and can cause various disorders. The trick with science fiction - is to steal just enough real information to make the set-up plausible. The cross-breading and over-processing of grains, and other items, makes it harder to digest, people get sick....anyhow, I found the explanation interesting. And far more believable than other zombie and vampire films. Although, ironically? COVID most likely came from a monkey or an animal - and mutated from that.]
****
Ah, blood sugar has balanced out finally. I no longer feel woozy. Note to self - be careful with the sugar intake.
Other Television Shows
1. Company You Keep
The second episode was even better than the first, mainly because we saw more of the supporting characters. It works - we got Fichter's Dad, and Polly Draper's Mom, plus Milo V (This is Us, Gilmore Girls) as the male lead (and he has a lot of charisma) and the female lead works as well (also she's Asian with a rich Asian family, knee deep in politics, which goes against the stereotype.)
She's a con artist (in a way) and so is he. They both lie for a living. The difference between them is she lies to her family, and everyone but the people she works with. He lies to everyone outside of his family.
It's working at any rate.
[Television still has the annoying wave, which I often forget about if I get engrossed in the show - I forgot about it in The Last of Us for example]
2 Picard S3 Episode 3 - Eh, it works and it doesn't work. They've made the stodgy decision of having the old Dominion Changling's from DS9 as the bad guys. Honestly I wish they'd come up with new bad guys. I rather liked S1, which kind of did? Also, I was reminded of why Beverly Crusher always annoyed me in the series - she makes decisions for everyone, and thinks she knows everything. I always wanted to smack her. Also she gets very condescending. Jean-Luc works better with Laris, who listens to him and doesn't criticize quite so much.
Ryker, I felt sorry for, and actually liked a great deal - because he's finally calling Jean-Luc on his bad decisions, and reckless disregard for the safety of the crew. Jean-Luc was a more intelligent version of Kirk at times.
I also like Jake Crusher. The actor is charismatic and appealing. The Worf and Raffi pairing works - takes the edge off of Worf. Also nice switch, having Worf be the calm and rational one, and Raffi being all over the place. Meanwhile Seven works very well paired with Jake Crusher.
So I liked the characters. The plot...I'm on the fence about. There's a reason I didn't stick with DS9, and the Dominion plot line was part of it.
3. True Lies
It's okay. I like the female lead, and her role. The guy is kind of just there and fairly bland. They went for someone who kind of resembled Arnold Swazzernegger - or rather a version without the muscles and bulk. I found it hard to believe this guy was recruited to be a spy, and his wife hadn't been recruited, but that's just me.
It's based on the original film, albeit updated a bit. We have two kids not just one. (In the original there was one - who was played by Eliza Dusku, and Eliza was molested on the set, apparently - which has forever tainted that film...but that's another story). The wife isn't having an affair or doing a weird side gig with some guy who is scamming her. (A side plot line that worked in the 1990s, but does not work now.) It's less sexist than the original.
I may stick with it for a bit. Just to see where it goes. Also, I always thought that movie would work well as a series - it's set up as one.
(CBS on Wed's - I think).
4. Astrid - PBS (this is a French Detective Series made in partnership with the BBC).
Astrid is an autistic woman who gets involved with a police detective (commander) and helps her solve crimes. They have an off-beat friendship, and the mysteries are interesting. As is Astrid - who can figure things out logically.
Okay, off to bed.
no subject
Date: 2023-03-06 05:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-06 05:42 pm (UTC)Now LGBTA is in reality shows, commercials, and pretty much most series. I can give you a list of shows if you want? My memory is dodgy though so I may have forgotten a few.
ETA: I admittedly have watched a lot of television in my lifetime. And am even aware of it on shows, I don't watch. Modern Family had a couple. So too does all the Shondre Rhimes primetime shows. Hacks does (actually everyone but Jean Smart and her kids are gay on that show). I was also watching them on daytime soap operas in the early 00s and late 1990s, so there's that.
no subject
Date: 2023-03-07 04:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-07 05:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-07 02:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-07 03:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-08 06:10 pm (UTC)Those old guys had names?? Oh, I think Ernie and Bert were gay too.
no subject
Date: 2023-03-06 02:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-06 05:44 pm (UTC)I'm thinking a lot of the people who were blown away by this - don't watch much television? People are weird a - they assume if they haven't seen it - it's not there?
no subject
Date: 2023-03-06 06:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-07 12:05 am (UTC)Station 19 does it. So does A Million Little Things. And Modern Family. Plus, there's Legacies. Originals had one. True Blood (granted not necessarily always happy). Queer As Folks. The L Word.
Hacks has a gay couple, and bisexual character. Schitt's Creek had one. Scandal did for a very long time, and it was happier than most in that show - did fall apart finally, but it was also Scandal.
I don't know I've seen it a lot. But I admittedly watch more television than most people. Also, I watched Daytime Soap Operas...both One Life to Live and All My Children had gay couples.
Sigh, people aren't as deprived as they think they are - they just aren't good at finding stuff. It's out there. I mean even the commercials have happy gay couples now. So too do movies.
no subject
Date: 2023-03-07 12:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-07 02:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-07 03:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-07 02:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-06 04:57 pm (UTC)I might like that bit of Picard more as I liked the Dominion storyline.
no subject
Date: 2023-03-06 05:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-06 05:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-06 05:58 pm (UTC)The Last of Us; The Dancing Doctor
Date: 2023-03-07 01:16 am (UTC)[I don't mind the movies so much. Two hours and you're out. Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead were fun.]
But "Long Long Time" was a nice break from the usual shambling undead business, a sweet character study of a loving couple who just happened to be middle aged men--something you really don't see on TV.
For fans of Parks and Recreation (and Nick Offerman), the episode boiled down to: what if Ron Swanson was gay? Because Bill really isn't that much different from Ron: the same distrust of governments, the same hyper-developed survivalist skills, taciturn to a fault. The only question I had was: could Offerman pull off the love scenes without embarrassing himself (and the audience)?
Turns out? He did fine. He had a very good partner in Murray Bartlett as Frank, who drew him out of his shell and eased him into the role.
I also enjoyed the Ronstadt reference (you know I'm a big fan of Linda). But this was probably my first and last episode. (I enjoy eating mushrooms too much to be terrified of them, week in and week out.)
**************
Beverly Crusher got on your nerves. She irritated a lot of TNG fans.
I loved Beverly.
She was stubborn, hard headed and loudly opinionated. She got up in Jean-Luc's face numerous times during the series and Q couldn't stand to be in the same room with her for more than a minute.
For me--as a saying goes--that's a feature, not a bug.
What's interesting to me is that the interests of a physician and a starship captain do not necessarily dovetail. Picard had to worry about galactic politics and the Prime Directive and such things; Beverly didn't give a crap about that stuff. She just wanted to treat her patients without the bureaucracy.
Beverly could have stayed at Starfleet Medical after TNG Season 1 (and again, after Nemesis), but she kept pulling up stakes and heading back to the frontier.
And then there's her relationship with Jean Luc. What a wonderful, tangled mess. To be attracted to the man who sent your husband to his death. (And she named their child after that dead husband! Beverly, that is just weird!) Gates McFadden and Beverly were all but ignored in the TNG movies; and then, after the movies were done, THEN the interesting stuff happens! We never got to see Jean Luc and Beverly finally try a relationship... and flame out spectacularly.
I don't have Paramount+. I doubt I'll ever see this series. But even from the sidelines, I'm delighted to see Gates and Beverly finally command center stage.
Re: The Last of Us; The Dancing Doctor
Date: 2023-03-07 02:32 am (UTC)**
So that's Nick Offerman? I get him confused with Michael Shannon - they look alike to me. Thanks for the gentle correction.
I apparently have watched a far broader spectrum of television than most people have. Because I have seen the gay male/middle-aged romance. (Hello Modern Family!) It's hardly as rare as everyone seems to think it is. You guys need to watch more television. Although, I will admit that you don't tend to see it in zombie dystopian television series or movies.
And, I'm thinking you might like Station Eleven - it kind of subverts the entire dystopian pandemic trope. It's an interesting narrative style, and episode 3 reminded me a lot of it. It's not like any of the others. Of course there are no zombie menace in Station Eleven, so that helps. The only menace are crazy humans, and they aren't really that big of one.
Outside of those two things, we're more or less in agreement. Seen one zombie television show or movie, you've seen them all. Which is why they tend to be a hard pass for me. I don't stick around long - I get bored, also tired of jumping away from the zombies. The was one British Zombie Show that I can't remember the name of, where people went to Zombie therapy which was kind of interesting.
I didn't stay with The Walking Dead much longer than you did. Made it roughly to the first portion of S3 and gave up. (I could figure out where it was going and was no longer interested. Beergoodfoamy and I stopped around the same time, he'd talked me into trying it, and then we both gave up in S3.)
Post-apocalyptic survival TV series are simply not my thing; there are just so many spins you can put on the material. The main characters form a familial bond. They evade various mutations of the infected undead. They encounter fascistic mini-regimes. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Yup, pretty much.
Station Eleven kind of side-steps this a bit. So I do recommend checking it out if you ever get the chance. It's only 10 or 13 episodes. Really short. And one season.
But Station Eleven is the only one that side-steps it. Also I don't think it had any LGBTA romances. Mainly focused on parent/child relationships.
The Last of Us so far is following the trope fairly closely. Episode 3 kind of steps away from it for an intermission of sorts, but I wouldn't say that it completely does.
no subject
Date: 2023-03-07 12:37 pm (UTC)I don't necessarily need to have Beverly at the center of the action; the series is called "Picard", not "Crusher". I just want the character and the actress to have a meatier role. Looks like she's getting it.
In the last episode, Bev had a dramatic confrontation with Jean Luc about why she kept Jack a secret, AND she saved the captain of the Titan when the ship's doctor inexplicably failed to spot internal bleeding. (Is that right?) Pretty good stuff!
Let's compare that to the four TNG movies:
In Generations, she was dunked in a holographic ocean by Data.
In First Contact, her role in the series--yelling at Jean Luc when he's acting like an idiot--was given to Alfre Woodard.
In Insurrection, Bev and Deanna talked about their boobs.
In Nemesis, all her significant scenes were cut.
This series is definitely an improvement.
no subject
Date: 2023-03-07 02:35 pm (UTC)I didn't watch it (hate documentary style sitcoms, it's a persona thing not worth going into in any depth), but even I remember that.
Regarding Beverly Crusher?
Well, okay, when you put it that way, you have a point. Actually, she has about as big a role as she did on STNG, or as Worf and Ryker in this one. They are about equal for once. And the confrontation scene between JL Picard and Crusher was well done, as was the scenes of Crusher in the medical bay with Doctor Oak. She's an odd character though - her actions don't make a lot of sense - but that's a plotting issue. I think.