Good Wife and Vamp Diaries...
Oct. 10th, 2011 12:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. The Good Wife - really good and twisty episode last night, in which it was once again all about the interpersonal politics and how people play each other. Also a great inside joke on the casting - for anyone who has seen the Wire. The last line delivered by the actor who played the ultimate "player" on The Wire (a corrupt Senator who conned everyone), on the Good Wife he plays an honest mediator, he tells Alicia: "You won because of how you played the opposing side and me."
Alicia: "That's not fair. The facts were on our side." Mediator: "No, it is fair, it's not polite, but it is fair. And yes the facts may have supported you, that's not why you won - you won because of how you played it. You're client is lucky to have you. If I were in trouble, I'd hire you as my lawyer." The case itself rarely matters in this show and often you aren't even sure what it is about, it's the power plays between the characters. How they bluff. And play the game. This bit is funny, if you know that the actor stating the mediator's line was the ultimate con man in another show. The Good Wife has a lot of fun with casting.
* Alicia and Will. I'm not sure what this relationship is exactly.
Owen (Alicia's brother) to Alicia: You should have rebelled when you were younger, would have been safer. Assuming this is rebellion and not love. Is it love?
Alicia thinking...for a moment (brow creased in deep thought): No, it's not love.
Owen: That's good because that would complicate things.
(They embrace and we see her expression - which is clouded)
Will had a similar discussion with Kalinda last week or the week before.
Their relationship is dangerous though to both their careers. Although I think Will is in a far more precarious position than Alicia.
* Eli Gould.
Eli has formed some interesting alliances with the three women in the firm, Diane, Kalinda, and Alicia. He does not like Will Gardner. Who to date has not interacted with Eli. But in this episode did step on Eli's toes - using information he had obtained from Diane regarding Eli to win another case.
Diane/Eli - they are working on the cheese case together, which Eli brought Diane in on to represent the State of Wisconsin Cheese, and Heather's Farms. Contaminated cheese has made children sick, Eli is managing the media crisis, and Diane is acting as the attorney for the legal issues. It's a major coup. Only one problem - have to be very careful what information you give to the media.
A pesky reporter who has information that Will needs for his case, wants to know who is managing the media crisis for the Cheese industry. Will barters that information for info on what his opponent has for the malpractice suit that he is negotiating.
The information Will gets - is that the State's Attorney's office chose to drop the fraud investigation against the defendant in Will's Case. That information is why Will's opponent, a lovely lady litigator played by Lisa Edlestein from House, is not raising her price and keeps lowering it.
The information Will leaks - disrupts Eli's carefully managed crisis. Eli has now become the news. As Eli explains to Diane - this can't happen. I can't become the story - then I managing my own image as well as the client's. There can't be any leaks.
Did you tell Will? Will hurt Eli.
Eli/Kalinda - Eli grabs Kalinda from Will's case. Will notices but barely. And is able to win without her. Kalinda runs into a road-block at the State's Attorney's Office, when her source, Carey, complains that she uses people's emotional attachment to her against them. Manipulating him into giving her information - with the promise of a romantic relationship. She denies this, but is it true? Meanwhile she's also acting as the investigator for Eli, but is confused as to what he wants - he doesn't want his client proven innocent, just to know what the problems are so he can manage it.
The Eli vs. Will bit is slowly being built up. As is the Eli-Kalinda relationship. In some respects, Eli is the male version of Kalinda. Both relationships have to be built, before the bomb that Alicia left Peter because of Kalinda and hopped into Bed with Will surfaces - or both Eli and Diane become aware of it.
* Alicia/Owen
The best scenes were with Owen, who I felt sorry for. He notices that the teen daughter's tutor is a bit into doing incredibly sexually suggestive dance moves and making videos of them. And then finds out Peter told Zac why Alicia left him. Owen is blind-sided. He'd thought Alicia left Peter for Will and love. No. She left because she found out Peter had slept with someone else and is basically rebelling or something.
* Will/ex-girl friend (opponent)
Apparently the old Will was a bit of a player? Lisa Edlestein who plays the ex-girlfriend/opponent, tells him they can just decide the case with a bet - the old Will would have done that. This Will says no. He also lets Alicia know that his ex-girlfriend wants to play Alicia and will use Alicia's jealousy against her. Alicia, who isn't jealous at all, suggests that she pretend to be and play it for both the old girlfriend and specifically the mediator. Alicia turns the tables on the ex-girlfriend and turns out to be a much better player than either Will or Lisa Edlestein.
Lisa Edlestein asks Will for a job - her firm is imploding, and about to disband. Can he help? Which poses an interesting dynamic...since she knows Will and Alicia are involved or has guessed that they are.
Not sure where they are heading with this, but it is fun to watch.
2. Vamp Diaries
Like The Good Wife, they are also building up the story. Laying in the ground-work. Ryan Murphy should watch and take notes. That's my difficulty with Ryan Murphy by the way - he wants to skip all the hard story-building work and skip to the chase, thinking this is innovative and new. His tales lack pacing - they feel like sprints. And from my perspective? It's just bad writing. For example: I'm horrible at repeating jokes that I've heard, because I often forget how to tell the set-up and just remember the punch line, I don't recreate the pacing and often jokes are all about the pacing, the set-up, the build. Often in a story it is all about the foundation, the build or in other words "the pacing" of the story...and it isn't easy to do it well - move too fast or skip to the chase, no one cares, take too long, meander, anti-climatic. This is particularly true in horror stories and comedies - where the emotional reaction is based not so much on a sight gag, but on the anticipation of the sight gag or fright. If you aren't anticipating it, it won't matter.
Two examples of how not to build a story by people who should know better: 1)Joss Whedon - Buffy S8 Comics - drew it out far too long - to the point in which the audience was either bored or really confused, they lost track of the story and interest in it, it became anti-climatic. To the point that many people either bailed before it was finished or directly after, not sticking around for S9. 2) Ryan Murphy - American Horror Story and to a degree last season's Glee - skipped to the chase and didn't build it at all. So when you see the sight gag, there's a sort of so what reflex. Or why should I care? (I want to make Murphy watch Robert Wise's minimalist masterpiece The Haunting about twenty times.)
Say what you will about Vamp Diaries, but they are very good at pacing their stories. As is, for that matter, The Good Wife. I care about pacing, not everyone does (obviously), but as a writer - I worry about it. I've been critiqued on pacing.
* Caroline/Daddy
Interesting that Williamson made Jake Coleman's Bill (Caroline's Daddy) gay. Williamson is gay. And it's more or a off-hand remark than a main point. Except Damon does make the comparison joke - "Bill threatened to out me, and I'm not even going to go into how ironic that is considering his own life-style choices". Also Bill's attempts to torture Caroline into controlling what she is and her desire to eat blood, to change her. The whole you can't change a vampire being compared directly to not changing someone who is gay...but it is more subtle than True Blood, and more tongue in cheek, almost as if the writers are making fun of the people who do compare vampires to homosexuals. It's also an inside joke in a way, since Jake Coleman played a gay character on Dynasty - he's first tv role way back in the 1970s/1980s.
Caroline at any rate saves her father from Damon. Damon goes on a bit of an angry/frustrated rampage - temporarily killing Alaric (which does not sit well with him), and almost killing Bill. He can't compel Bill - because a)his technique according to Bill is a bit on the lazy side, and b) Bill's figured out how to resist it.
Damon wants to kill Bill for two reasons 1)he threatened to out him and 2) he wants to put vervaine in the drinking water.
(Neither of which Elena or Alaric think are bad ideas. Their inability to contain or control Damon is brought home to them when
Damon temporarily kills Alaric. Caroline though is able to fight Damon off, which I found interesting and not quite believable. I don't care how pissed off she is - Damon is revved up on Fresh Blood and 100 years older than she is. Hello.)
Personally? I didn't care all that much about Bill one way or the other. They always leave the supporting characters that I don't care about alive in these shows and kill off the one's I like.
* Bonnie is back and Jeremy eventually tells her about Anna and Vickie's visitations. I'm not sure we're supposed to believe Anna or not. But according to Anna - she's on the other side and all alone. Vicki represents a darkness that threatens Jeremy and he mustn't trust Vicki or help her in anyway. He can only see them if he is thinking about them and pulls at them, they have to push at him and he has to pull at them for it to work. Which actually makes a lot of sense - somebody researched this.
Bonnie has also discovered that someone is hunting for Elena's necklace - which Elena doesn't want to part with because it reminds her of Stefan. Stefan gave it to her. That is until it burns Elena and Bonnie takes possession to see why. Meanwhile
voodoo witch, Erica? is torturing Stefan to get more information on what he did with it. Katharine saves him and offers a partnership - since he has figured out that someone out there scares Rebecca and Niklaus. A vampire hunter. Katherine says, hey, if you've found a way to get rid of Klaus - I want in. But Stefan refuses. I already miss the witch Katherine killed, she was interesting.
* Stefan plays with freeing another one of Klaus' family members (most likely Elijah - guessing he wants an ally?) He's finding Rebecca and Klaus less interesting than they were in the 1920s. Rebecca has the nifty gift of figuring out when people are lying, poor Stefan who is doing nothing but lying. Together Rebecca and Klaus figure out that Elena isn't dead and that's probably why Klaus can't make hybrids. So by the end of the episode - Klaus takes Stefan back to Mystic Falls in a moving van.
* Meanwhile, Katherine pretends to be Elena in order to convince Bonnie to give her the necklace, then she visits Damon who she talks into accompanying her on a nifty little trip, regarding the necklace. Damon who is frustrated and has been told to take a beat and step back from Elena, takes her up on it - timing being everything here.
That's all that happened, but they did a good job of building a few things up. Elena clearly has feelings for Damon but is suppressing them, because she feels ashamed. "I can't think about it, because if I admit that I do have feelings for him what does that make me?", Caroline: "Human". Pretty much. Seriously I don't see much difference between Damon's deeds and Stefans. So Stefan feels guilty? He reminds me of the serial killer who whines about killing people and leaves clues everywhere so someone might stop him. (Ted Bundy was pretty much this character). I can't help it, I'm addicted to killing people. Damon in contrast just has major anger issues and isn't good at controlling himself - if someone pisses him off, he rips their head off. So why is Stefan better again? Oh right, because he whines and is all morosely guilty. Got it. I prefer Damon, more pro-active, more honest, less whiny. I think Elena is a romantic idiot, albeit smarter than Bella and Sookie, I'll give her that. At any rate - all Elena is doing is confusing Damon. Who does not want to be turned into his brother, can't say I blame him. He was a ticking time bomb waiting to explode.
Alaric does get inspired finally to protect the actual humans in the town. And tells Diane Lockward and Sheriff Carter that someone has to, all they are doing is protecting the supernatural beings with their own rules. He's not wrong. Hope this doesn't end the Damon/Alaric buddy hour - because I was rather enjoying that. Although we did get an end to the Klaus/Stefan buddy hour more or less.
Is it wrong for me to root for a Damon/Katherine relationship? I rather like them together. They are fun.
Alicia: "That's not fair. The facts were on our side." Mediator: "No, it is fair, it's not polite, but it is fair. And yes the facts may have supported you, that's not why you won - you won because of how you played it. You're client is lucky to have you. If I were in trouble, I'd hire you as my lawyer." The case itself rarely matters in this show and often you aren't even sure what it is about, it's the power plays between the characters. How they bluff. And play the game. This bit is funny, if you know that the actor stating the mediator's line was the ultimate con man in another show. The Good Wife has a lot of fun with casting.
* Alicia and Will. I'm not sure what this relationship is exactly.
Owen (Alicia's brother) to Alicia: You should have rebelled when you were younger, would have been safer. Assuming this is rebellion and not love. Is it love?
Alicia thinking...for a moment (brow creased in deep thought): No, it's not love.
Owen: That's good because that would complicate things.
(They embrace and we see her expression - which is clouded)
Will had a similar discussion with Kalinda last week or the week before.
Their relationship is dangerous though to both their careers. Although I think Will is in a far more precarious position than Alicia.
* Eli Gould.
Eli has formed some interesting alliances with the three women in the firm, Diane, Kalinda, and Alicia. He does not like Will Gardner. Who to date has not interacted with Eli. But in this episode did step on Eli's toes - using information he had obtained from Diane regarding Eli to win another case.
Diane/Eli - they are working on the cheese case together, which Eli brought Diane in on to represent the State of Wisconsin Cheese, and Heather's Farms. Contaminated cheese has made children sick, Eli is managing the media crisis, and Diane is acting as the attorney for the legal issues. It's a major coup. Only one problem - have to be very careful what information you give to the media.
A pesky reporter who has information that Will needs for his case, wants to know who is managing the media crisis for the Cheese industry. Will barters that information for info on what his opponent has for the malpractice suit that he is negotiating.
The information Will gets - is that the State's Attorney's office chose to drop the fraud investigation against the defendant in Will's Case. That information is why Will's opponent, a lovely lady litigator played by Lisa Edlestein from House, is not raising her price and keeps lowering it.
The information Will leaks - disrupts Eli's carefully managed crisis. Eli has now become the news. As Eli explains to Diane - this can't happen. I can't become the story - then I managing my own image as well as the client's. There can't be any leaks.
Did you tell Will? Will hurt Eli.
Eli/Kalinda - Eli grabs Kalinda from Will's case. Will notices but barely. And is able to win without her. Kalinda runs into a road-block at the State's Attorney's Office, when her source, Carey, complains that she uses people's emotional attachment to her against them. Manipulating him into giving her information - with the promise of a romantic relationship. She denies this, but is it true? Meanwhile she's also acting as the investigator for Eli, but is confused as to what he wants - he doesn't want his client proven innocent, just to know what the problems are so he can manage it.
The Eli vs. Will bit is slowly being built up. As is the Eli-Kalinda relationship. In some respects, Eli is the male version of Kalinda. Both relationships have to be built, before the bomb that Alicia left Peter because of Kalinda and hopped into Bed with Will surfaces - or both Eli and Diane become aware of it.
* Alicia/Owen
The best scenes were with Owen, who I felt sorry for. He notices that the teen daughter's tutor is a bit into doing incredibly sexually suggestive dance moves and making videos of them. And then finds out Peter told Zac why Alicia left him. Owen is blind-sided. He'd thought Alicia left Peter for Will and love. No. She left because she found out Peter had slept with someone else and is basically rebelling or something.
* Will/ex-girl friend (opponent)
Apparently the old Will was a bit of a player? Lisa Edlestein who plays the ex-girlfriend/opponent, tells him they can just decide the case with a bet - the old Will would have done that. This Will says no. He also lets Alicia know that his ex-girlfriend wants to play Alicia and will use Alicia's jealousy against her. Alicia, who isn't jealous at all, suggests that she pretend to be and play it for both the old girlfriend and specifically the mediator. Alicia turns the tables on the ex-girlfriend and turns out to be a much better player than either Will or Lisa Edlestein.
Lisa Edlestein asks Will for a job - her firm is imploding, and about to disband. Can he help? Which poses an interesting dynamic...since she knows Will and Alicia are involved or has guessed that they are.
Not sure where they are heading with this, but it is fun to watch.
2. Vamp Diaries
Like The Good Wife, they are also building up the story. Laying in the ground-work. Ryan Murphy should watch and take notes. That's my difficulty with Ryan Murphy by the way - he wants to skip all the hard story-building work and skip to the chase, thinking this is innovative and new. His tales lack pacing - they feel like sprints. And from my perspective? It's just bad writing. For example: I'm horrible at repeating jokes that I've heard, because I often forget how to tell the set-up and just remember the punch line, I don't recreate the pacing and often jokes are all about the pacing, the set-up, the build. Often in a story it is all about the foundation, the build or in other words "the pacing" of the story...and it isn't easy to do it well - move too fast or skip to the chase, no one cares, take too long, meander, anti-climatic. This is particularly true in horror stories and comedies - where the emotional reaction is based not so much on a sight gag, but on the anticipation of the sight gag or fright. If you aren't anticipating it, it won't matter.
Two examples of how not to build a story by people who should know better: 1)Joss Whedon - Buffy S8 Comics - drew it out far too long - to the point in which the audience was either bored or really confused, they lost track of the story and interest in it, it became anti-climatic. To the point that many people either bailed before it was finished or directly after, not sticking around for S9. 2) Ryan Murphy - American Horror Story and to a degree last season's Glee - skipped to the chase and didn't build it at all. So when you see the sight gag, there's a sort of so what reflex. Or why should I care? (I want to make Murphy watch Robert Wise's minimalist masterpiece The Haunting about twenty times.)
Say what you will about Vamp Diaries, but they are very good at pacing their stories. As is, for that matter, The Good Wife. I care about pacing, not everyone does (obviously), but as a writer - I worry about it. I've been critiqued on pacing.
* Caroline/Daddy
Interesting that Williamson made Jake Coleman's Bill (Caroline's Daddy) gay. Williamson is gay. And it's more or a off-hand remark than a main point. Except Damon does make the comparison joke - "Bill threatened to out me, and I'm not even going to go into how ironic that is considering his own life-style choices". Also Bill's attempts to torture Caroline into controlling what she is and her desire to eat blood, to change her. The whole you can't change a vampire being compared directly to not changing someone who is gay...but it is more subtle than True Blood, and more tongue in cheek, almost as if the writers are making fun of the people who do compare vampires to homosexuals. It's also an inside joke in a way, since Jake Coleman played a gay character on Dynasty - he's first tv role way back in the 1970s/1980s.
Caroline at any rate saves her father from Damon. Damon goes on a bit of an angry/frustrated rampage - temporarily killing Alaric (which does not sit well with him), and almost killing Bill. He can't compel Bill - because a)his technique according to Bill is a bit on the lazy side, and b) Bill's figured out how to resist it.
Damon wants to kill Bill for two reasons 1)he threatened to out him and 2) he wants to put vervaine in the drinking water.
(Neither of which Elena or Alaric think are bad ideas. Their inability to contain or control Damon is brought home to them when
Damon temporarily kills Alaric. Caroline though is able to fight Damon off, which I found interesting and not quite believable. I don't care how pissed off she is - Damon is revved up on Fresh Blood and 100 years older than she is. Hello.)
Personally? I didn't care all that much about Bill one way or the other. They always leave the supporting characters that I don't care about alive in these shows and kill off the one's I like.
* Bonnie is back and Jeremy eventually tells her about Anna and Vickie's visitations. I'm not sure we're supposed to believe Anna or not. But according to Anna - she's on the other side and all alone. Vicki represents a darkness that threatens Jeremy and he mustn't trust Vicki or help her in anyway. He can only see them if he is thinking about them and pulls at them, they have to push at him and he has to pull at them for it to work. Which actually makes a lot of sense - somebody researched this.
Bonnie has also discovered that someone is hunting for Elena's necklace - which Elena doesn't want to part with because it reminds her of Stefan. Stefan gave it to her. That is until it burns Elena and Bonnie takes possession to see why. Meanwhile
voodoo witch, Erica? is torturing Stefan to get more information on what he did with it. Katharine saves him and offers a partnership - since he has figured out that someone out there scares Rebecca and Niklaus. A vampire hunter. Katherine says, hey, if you've found a way to get rid of Klaus - I want in. But Stefan refuses. I already miss the witch Katherine killed, she was interesting.
* Stefan plays with freeing another one of Klaus' family members (most likely Elijah - guessing he wants an ally?) He's finding Rebecca and Klaus less interesting than they were in the 1920s. Rebecca has the nifty gift of figuring out when people are lying, poor Stefan who is doing nothing but lying. Together Rebecca and Klaus figure out that Elena isn't dead and that's probably why Klaus can't make hybrids. So by the end of the episode - Klaus takes Stefan back to Mystic Falls in a moving van.
* Meanwhile, Katherine pretends to be Elena in order to convince Bonnie to give her the necklace, then she visits Damon who she talks into accompanying her on a nifty little trip, regarding the necklace. Damon who is frustrated and has been told to take a beat and step back from Elena, takes her up on it - timing being everything here.
That's all that happened, but they did a good job of building a few things up. Elena clearly has feelings for Damon but is suppressing them, because she feels ashamed. "I can't think about it, because if I admit that I do have feelings for him what does that make me?", Caroline: "Human". Pretty much. Seriously I don't see much difference between Damon's deeds and Stefans. So Stefan feels guilty? He reminds me of the serial killer who whines about killing people and leaves clues everywhere so someone might stop him. (Ted Bundy was pretty much this character). I can't help it, I'm addicted to killing people. Damon in contrast just has major anger issues and isn't good at controlling himself - if someone pisses him off, he rips their head off. So why is Stefan better again? Oh right, because he whines and is all morosely guilty. Got it. I prefer Damon, more pro-active, more honest, less whiny. I think Elena is a romantic idiot, albeit smarter than Bella and Sookie, I'll give her that. At any rate - all Elena is doing is confusing Damon. Who does not want to be turned into his brother, can't say I blame him. He was a ticking time bomb waiting to explode.
Alaric does get inspired finally to protect the actual humans in the town. And tells Diane Lockward and Sheriff Carter that someone has to, all they are doing is protecting the supernatural beings with their own rules. He's not wrong. Hope this doesn't end the Damon/Alaric buddy hour - because I was rather enjoying that. Although we did get an end to the Klaus/Stefan buddy hour more or less.
Is it wrong for me to root for a Damon/Katherine relationship? I rather like them together. They are fun.
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no subject
Date: 2011-10-10 05:06 pm (UTC)That would indeed be tragic, hopefully they will come back together to fight Klaus/Rebekah.
And I am quite curious to see where Damon and Katherine are going to visit.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-11 12:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-11 05:53 pm (UTC)Sheeeeeeeeeittttt.
I think this is the first thing I've ever seen him in where he doesn't utter that word.
As per Eli being the male Kalinda, I'm not sure I really see it. Perhaps you can exlaborate. Yes, they are both hired to manage crises, but, I think are very different.
Kalinda, cool, calm and reserved while Eli is none of these things. And Kalinda who relies on keeping her patrons calm while Eli relies on people being afraid enough to listen to him. (Although, the one regard in which they are most alike is that their strategic advice is almost always right...)
no subject
Date: 2011-10-11 06:07 pm (UTC)Eli will often use things he knows about someone to manipulate them into doing what he wants. Kalinda often uses emotion or feelings to do it.
Neither are lawyers, yet in some respects are better at the manipulation game than the lawyers are.