I just realised something: since, starting on Sunday, I'll be on the road for the next two weeks, every day somewhere else, armed only with my faithful Ipad, I shan't be able to watch at least the next two episodes of Breaking Bad until in two and a half or three weeks. WOE. Also, how to avoid spoilers? You, trusty friends, are really good about keeping these under cut, but other places on the internet aren't. And by the time I watch these episodes, my reviews and speculations will be rendundant. Argh!

Also, I hear we'll get a Better Call Saul spin-off. Which sounds like fun, though what I really want is Saul Goodman guest starring on a couple of other shows. Saul versus Alicia & Cary on The Good Wife, for example. (Or possibly with Alicia & Cary and against Will & Diane?) Saul Goodman versus Patty Hewes would be unfair, I guess, because, well, Patty. She'd have him for breakfast. Saul Goodman: The Apprenticeship because clearly he was an intern at Wolfram & Hart of Angel fame could be fun. And speaking of prequels, there could be at least one Once Upon A Time crossover wherein Emma Swan was tasked with getting one of Saul's clients back to town. Any other ideas?

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On a completely different note, while researching something, I came across the second part of Sian Philipp's memoirs again, wherein there is a great passage of Katherine Hepburn during the filming of The Lion in Winter. (Sian Philipps: always and forever the Empress Livia in I, Claudius and thus the best evil Overlady of the Ancient World, but also during the 60s married to Peter O'Toole, hence present during the filming of The Lion in Winter. In said film, Katherine Hepburn was Eleanor of Aquitaine, Peter O'Toole, Henry II, Anthony Hopkins, Richard Lionheart:

Kate Hepburn, whom I first met when she was filming Lion in Winter, was interesting and in many ways admirable, but I couldn't help feeling envious of the way in which she seemed to have her life organised so as to have things all her own way.(...) When O'Toole, who was very smitten by her glamorous, unusual presence, was moved to say, 'My God - if I was thirty years younger I'd have given Spencer Tracy a run for his money', we looked at each other, slightly cross-eyed, wondering which of us had been insulted; Kate for being considered too old to be desirable or me, who, all things being equal, would have been discarded in favour of a younger Kate. It wasn't something to be thought about too closely, so we both smiled sweetly. When, in 1970, Kate was playing in Coco, the musical, in New York, O'Toole and I dined at her house before leaving for South America. As we left, she grabbed me by the arm and hissed, 'You let him push you around - stop it. I'm spoiled.Get spoiled!' I nodded, smiling, and thought I'd like to see her try getting her own way with O'Toole, were she thirty years younger. Not a chance. I remember her as spoiled and selfish indeed but what wonderful common sense she had. And she took what she wanted and paid for it, and, I would hazard, has rarely had occasion to regret her choices.(...)

The most extraordinary things happen in our profession. I'm sure Anthony Hopkins would agree that he was, in 1968, the least likely candidate for international super stardom and respectable knighthood. The he went to America, made some awful movies, temporarily renounced the theatre, nearly killed himself in a car, joined AA, and became one of our most senior, respectable ennobled actors. Hepburn was one of Tony's first mentors in the movies. O'Toole, against the wishes of the American producers and the casting director, had insisted on engaging him for Lion in Winter. (John Castle was another of his 'finds' and Nigel Terry also - a remarkable, very Cornish actor.) When Tony played his first scene with Kate she took him by the shoulders and turned him away from her. 'There's the camera - over there. It needs to see you.'

I define "conflict" as something that comes from within the characters for the purpose of this meme, not as something external (i.e. interference by third party, higher circumstances etc.).

1.) Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr, aka Magneto. (X-Men in various incarnations.) Now these two exist in dozens of somewhat differing continuities, in comicverse, canon AUs like Neil Gaiman's 1602, in cartoons, and now, depending on whether or not you count First Class as a prequel or as a reboot, also in the movieverse, but for me for any incarnation of Xavier and Magneto to emotionally hook me, three core elements have to be maintained: a) the relationship starts as friendship, b) the fallout is for ideological reasons, not because of sudden loathing,, disrespect etc., and c) said ideological reasons are passionately held by both parties and thus while the basic affection remains, they really can not be surrendered. I like a reconciliation and fix it story as much as the next fangirl (and when the occasional canon continuity does it, as when Excalibur had Xavier and Magneto living together in Genosha, I feel mushy), but to me the conflict is part of the attraction the characters hold for me. I need both of them to have right and wrong elements in their reasoning, not just one side to be right, and I don't want a happily ever after where one of them basically says "okay, I realize now you were right all the time, let's have sex lunch".

2.) Laura Roslin and Gaius Baltar (Battlestar Galactica). As much as I agree with a lot of the complaints re: the later BSG seasons, I will always maintain the Laura-Gaius dynamic was pure genius and one of the best things about the show. Why? Because it's never as simple as "noble president and worthless selfish traitor", though yes, Roslin is noble, and Baltar is selfish (and occasionally a traitor). The clash between looking-out-for-number-one Gaius and living-for-her-people Laura wouldn't have gripped me half as much if it wasn't also between Laura's ruthlessness and Gaius' surprising lack-of-hate-for-any-side humanity now and then; if the "how do I treat Gaius Baltar, knowing what he did?" didn't become a core ethical challenge for Laura Roslin, and Gaius Baltar hadn't these "why-don't-you-like-me-Laura-dammit-I-just-saved-your-life-AGAIN" blinkers. Also the actors are golden in any scenes they share.

3.) Patty Hewes and Ellen Parsons (Damages). Starts out as your basic pragmatic user-mentor/idealistic protegée dynamic and becomes something vastly more complicated. (Attempted murder early on will do that for you.) As will projected family issues, potential successor power play and jockeying for who-needs-whom-more positions. I wasn't completely happy with the writing of Ellen in the fourth season, but the third season was fantastic in this regard, and my s4 nitpicks notwithstanding, the Patty & Ellen dynamic, whether as allies or antagonists or both (especially both), whether they're screwing each other over or helping each other beat the system or both, is pretty much unique for female characters on current tv. A difficult conflict? You bet. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

4.) Toby Ziegler and Jed Bartlet (The West Wing). I still regard it as a personal failing that I'm unable to write the big epic post show story about these two I want to, but I did try to capture what fascinates me about this very, VERY conflicted relationship in this short vignette. What do I see as their core conflict? There's the big ethical dimension, to be sure (Toby appointing himself as conscience of not just the administration in general but Jed Bartlett in particular, the president not always living up to the man Toby wants him to be), but another aspect I see is that this is in its way a twisty take on the writer and muse story. And I love this about it.

5.) Londo Mollari and G'Kar (Babylon 5). In a way the reverse of the Magneto and Xavier dynamic in that they start out as enemies and end up as, well, that's incredibly difficult to summ up in brief, given entire manifestos get written about it. I was torn whether or not to include them because the original Narn and Centauri conflict that forms their background and to some degree them wasn't started by them. But their own decisions of how to deal with this and the other situations they find themselves in are so crucial that I decided they qualify anyway. Just as Londo would not have responded to any other Narn the way he did to G'Kar, the same is true for G'Kar and any other Centauri, both in their enmity and their later alliance-of-necessity-turned-friendship-turned-whatever-you-want-to-call-it. To give but one of many examples: take G'Kar's immediate reaction in a core s2 scene from The Coming of Shadows upon learning a certain spoilery plot point has just happened. Is it "those damned Centauri are at it again" or "I never should have trusted any Centauri!"? Nope. It's "he betrayed me!" The personal is political and the political is personal, indeed. And is the conflict between them a difficult one? Given that it forms the core arc of the arc show to end all arc shows, you might say so, yes. :)

In which a tag scene offers a genuine jaw-dropper. Also, it appears I've been getting a name wrong all this time.

( Of targets and deals )

Some prompts from this morning's meme answered, at your service. :)


For trude:

( Donna Noble (Doctor Who) and Kilgarrah (Merlin) )

For ffutures:

( Dawn Summers (BtvS) and the Swami Clang (Help!) )

For likeadeuce:

( Atia of the Julii (Rome) and River Song (Doctor Who) )


For chaila:

( Patty Hewes (Damages) and Laura Roslin (BSG) )

Via chaila: Damages is nearly back on screen. I still have some anxiety because the season 3 finale would have been the perfect series finaly, and I've been burned by some shows who did that and then added a season which was, err, detrimental to my favourite characters (*cough* Alias *cough*), but: Patty and Ellen are back, and I can't not be glad about that. Patty Hewes and Ellen Parsons and their convoluted relationship, the way it developed especially are something incredibly rare (sadly) on tv: two strong female characters, with their interaction not a side aspect, not an "also", but the key driving force of the show.

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Speaking of convoluted relationships: one of my absolute favourite things about Battlestar Galactica was the relationship between Laura Roslin and Gaius Baltar, so much so that I once wrote an essay about it. Their scenes together were always golden, and while the essay is about what it was, I also loved what it wasn't. Because this was one relationship between a woman and a man which wasn't about sex, and it was a relationship between people who were, if you look at the start of the show, the heroine and the human villain (of sorts), and yet it wasn't heroine versus villain, either, and never as clear cut. So imagine my delight when I used about ten minutes of secure internet connection and stumbled across nicole_anell having done a Twenty Days of Laura and Gaius, twenty of her favourite scenes between these two.

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X-Men fanfic rec of the day: Reinvention, which is Charles/Moira, believable Charles/Moira, managing to use some of her comicverse background (and future) while still being true to the movieverse. Moira fanfiction is sadly still rare, but this one does a great job. (But pay attention to the warnings, if you have triggers.)

veritykindle pointed out to me yesterday how often intelligence in current media is either vilified or as a default option presented as tied to a cold/broken/rude/next-to-sociopathic/any-or-all-of-the-above personality. Which, if you think about it, is depressingly true. "Very smart" seems to come coupled with "clueless about emotions" almost automatically by now. The exception that came at once to mind for me when I thought about it was The West Wing, where most of the cast, both male and female, is presented as very intelligent and conscious of it, and, while having character flaws and entirely capable of behaving like jerks on occasion, but as an exception, not as a rule. Toby Ziegler, one of the smartest as well as one of the most argumentative characters, is also written and played as passionate, both about issues and people. And of course gets the scene with Jed Bartlet where Aaron Sorkin verbalizes his frustation that intelligence and education seem to have become dirty words in politics and politicians assume they have to play both down if they want to win elections. (This reminded me of an American journalist telling me once, back in the early Bush years, that Clinton got elected twice not because but inspite of the fact he had a Fulbright scholarship and went to Oxford, that he only got away with this because he could play up the Southern good old boy thing as well as the poor background and thus could avoid being perceived as elitist.) Of course, The West Wing ended years ago. Thinking of more recent shows, Damages and The Good Wife came to mind, also shows where intelligence does not automatically come with emotional cluelessness or even disengagement and is not something the leads have to play down or disingenously pretend not to have. Which was a relief. Self, thought I, you drew premature conclusions.

But then again, thinking about Damages and The Good Wife reminded me of something else, something abigail_n brought up in her overview of The Good Wife in regards to the main character, Alicia: It's become a pernicious commonplace, not only of fiction about politics but of politics in the real world, that ambition is always a hallmark of evil, and that the only people who deserve power are the ones who truly don't want it. It's an attitude that gives us leaders who are either accomplished liars or easily-led fools. That Alicia feels such disdain for the games of influence and power that surround her (even as she occasionally plays them herself) suggests that the writers don't believe it's ever possible to be both ambitious and moral. I'm not sure this is true of The Good Wife, and it's definitely not true of Damages - Patty Hewes is ambitious and morally grey for many reasons, but not for lack of an ethical code (her anger at Frobisher's self glorification and Hollywoodesque claim to a "redemption story" in the third season, for example, is genuine), and our other leading character, Ellen, by the third season is definitely long past naivete yet still both ambitious and moral - but the lure of what I'd call the Cincinnatus ideal - that you can only be good and powerful if you don't want power, end up with it by accident and withdraw from it as soon as you can, whereas if you're ambitious you're automatically suspect - is certainly strong in many other stories.

And perhaps in some odd way, this ties to the need of combine intelligence with inability to handle emotions and/or indeed feel them (not the same thing). From a Doylist pov, there is probably the fear of presenting a character as "too perfect". Witness the quickness with which the term "Mary Sueeeeeee!" is hurled at any female character both smart and in tune with her emotions. But to a lesser degree, it's true for male characters as well. Conversely: the assumption that a "good" person must be a primarily emotional one, not an intellectual, and without ambition because having ambition is not a positive emotion. And yet, see above, you can tell a story with flawed characters for whom this is not true.

Moving away from shows about lawyers and politicians, and looking at real life reactions to actors and musicians: maybe I'm exaggerating, but it seems to me that again, there is an assumption that ambition, especially when combined with smarts, is something a true artist should not have but should, if he/she wants to stay sympathetic, look at their success like a bewildered child, helpless in the hands of evil-yet-smart managers. Almost as soon as the Henry V applause was over, the media response to the openly ambitious Kenneth Branagh was distinctly hostile, with an ongoing undertone of "who the hell does he think he is?" and lots of Schadenfreude when after a string of success at the box office he flopped and his personal life derailed; only in the last five or six years, after various character roles instead of leading roles, did the media hostility turn to approval again. And the other day I watched a German Beatles documentary film with that old chestnut, the "Paul was a soulless business person from the start, rather than a true artist, even as a teenager, because he made the band practice (shock horror) and read the contracts they were given instead of just signing (the cad)". See what I mean? It's easy to love Vincent Van Gogh, who sold only two pictures during his lifetime. Less easy to love Michelangelo (as a person, I mean, not his creations) who in addition to being a genius artist was also a savvy businessman completely up to negotiating with popes and cardinals about his fees (and also dying in his old age and in bed, not young).

This insistence: if you're good at something - intellectually, or artistically, - there has to a comparable drawback; if you're successful, it has to be either be punished by a fall, or it has to come to you by accident and through other forces, not because you worked for it and wanted it.

I find it bewildering, and occasionally downright depressing.

Damages and The Good Wife continue to make me very happy. The former, after a mixed second season, currently has a wonderful third one, and the Patty-Ellen (which is damn near Patty/Ellen now) interplay just makes me purr. Also the mystery this season is something the audience is really emotionally invested in. ( Spoilery reason. ) Moreover, we're not constantly switching antagonists; the Tobin family plus Martin Short is given time to be explored. Rose Byrnes isn't so frighteningly thin anymore, and Ellen's relationship with Patty grows ever more complex. And the show still continues to avoid all the usual clichés female leads can be burdened with. Glenn Close continuing to be awesome goes without saying.

The Good Wife makes me purr as well. Well, unless there's a scene between Will and Alicia, because Will rapidly fills the Bill-Adama-shaped hole in my life. (As in: character I want to slap each time I see him.) Thankfully, there aren't many of these, and instead lots of Alicia and Kalinda, and Diane (last episode matching wits with a character played by Gary Cole, which made the American Gothic fan in me squee, plus his character actually was cool, and I hope this wasn't the last time we've seen him). Three female regulars, each of them complex in her own right, and all with their own agendas. And the relationship between two of them as the key relationship of the show. This show is just quietly demonstrating that you can pass the Bechdel test all the time. (Also? I'll take the way they play Kalinda's sexuality any time over the tired old House/Wilson "ha ha ha, we're joking" stick.)

To round off the squee, a couple of days ago I saw that The Sarah Jane Adventures have been granted a fourth and fifth season by the BBC, which made me go "hooray!" in RTD/Julie/Phil Collinson audio commentary style. It's just such a lovely show, and I don't want to say goodbye to Rani, Luke, Clyde and Sarah Jane for a long, long while.