makamu asked me about this. Well, in retrospect, ideally, I think the show could have ended with the fifth season. The fourth had had some dry spells, but the fifth was superb, firing on all thrusters, so to speak.

( Spoilers ensue )

The Other Days

So The Good Wife is finally coming to an end? Two seasons too late for me to care, but it was once an amazing show.

New Civil War trailer: so I was hoping that movie would resolve my Bucky problem, to whit, that I'm indifferent to the character beyond a mild "gosh, what an awful brainwashed life", and indeed I'm starting to have Bucky feelings, but unfortunately, they're all negative ones. I'm completely invested in the wrong sidekick in this movie, because when I watched the trailer and ( spoilers ensued )

(It helps that I do think superheroes should be accountable to someone who aren't other superheroes. Not insane military generals, obviously, but definitely some institution.)

Black Sails not having much of a fandom on lj or dw, I'm driven to check out the dark side tumblr now and then, and predictably, this irritates me into the need to vent:

( which I shall do in a spoilery fashion )

Lastly, trying to find good Clone Wars inspired stories reminds me how many badly spelled and/or badly written fanfiction is out there. Good lord. Thankfully, there are a few bright lights.

Or, to paraphrase Tallyrand about the execution of the Duke of Enghien ("worse than a crime: a stupidity"), it's worse than ridiculous: it's unprofessional.

So, one of the shows I stopped watching during the season that has just finished was The Good Wife. Mostly because a truly excellent season (the fifth one) was followed by a very mediocre one which took back most of what had made the fifth season good and didn't offer anything interesting in its place, instead increasingly going for Greatest Hits Retreats (with characters who had long outstayed their welcome, looking at you, Colin Sweeney), while also losing the ensembleness and character interactions that used to make the show. Now, had all of this not been the case, the fact that this was also the last season for one of the main characters, Kalinda, something which the audience was very aware of since the actress leaving the show had been announced, would not have been that big of a deal to me; while I've always liked Kalinda, she never had been my favourite character, or the key selling point of the show to me.

However, even if Kalinda hadn't been what made the show for me, it HAD been unavoidable to notice that despite the characters of Alicia and Kalinda reconciling in season 3, the actresses hadn't shared a scene together for more than 50 episodes after that. While Kalinda and Alicia talked, it was always on the phone. This year, there was incrreasing speculation about the reasons for this in the press. When it turned out that even in the last episodes, after I had stopped watching, the shared scene(s), when they finally came, were the result of cinematic trickery and green screen, I experienced the most massive eyeroll since that time when Newt Gingrich complained about Bill Clinton not invinting him to the front of the plane en route to Rabin's funeral and named this as a reason to shut down the government. Seriously?

Look, I don't care if politicians behave that way, but I want my members of the acting profession and of tv producing to have certain standards. To wit: no matter how you feel about each other, you do what you're paid for, which is, if you're an actress: acting your character with other actors to the best of your abilities. If another actor is abusing their kids or beating up their spouse or guilty of something similar, THEN, and only then, I could understand someone declaring "I don't want to work with this person, I don't even want to be in the same room with them". In all other cases, it's just stupid and, see above.

I'm a Star Trek fan. Which means I'm very aware of a very famous case of a leading actor managing to piss off the entire supporting cast with his ego. Did said supporting cast ever let that influence how they played their characters' emotions towards his character? Nope. And say what you want about William Shatner, but he never pulled a stunt like this, either. (If he had, we'd know by now.) And he actually worked in Sci Fi, where the use of what used to be blue and is now green screen is justified.

Mind you, I'm blaming the producers, too. If they didn't have the strength of character to put their foot down and declare "no matter what differences you have privately, your characters are supposed to be on screen together, so get in the studio already, ladies", they're failing their profession just as much.

I mean. This is show biz. Theatre, film and tv are full of feuding actors who worked together regardless because that was their job. (And it provided us with lots of entertaining stories, too.) I refuse to call this "diva like behavior", because divas, female and male, actually know better. They're professionals.

In short: Lemond Bishop and Frank Prady related plot parts yay, Colin Sweeney related nay, because by now Colin Sweeney episodes tend to be terribly repetive.

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First world problems: no Good Wife or Agent Carter yet for me (come through, Itunes, come through!). Also Darth Real Life keeps me really busy these days. Still, I have had an unexpected attack of Vir (from Babylon 5) feelings. He really is one of the most endearing characters ever, and one of the few where the balance between loyalty/friendship and individual conscience works just perfectly for me. Vir's affection for Londo at no point means he accepts Londo's rationalizations for wrongness. And he doesn't just have scruples, he does something about this (as in: actively helping, see Abramo Lincolni). Conversely, he never gives up on Londo, and imo that's a big part of why many a viewer doesn't, either. And lastly, the fact that it's Vir who makes Londo finally turn around and face himself/his deeds/G'Kar in The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari is possibly my favourite part in my favourite dream episode: "I'd miss you." "And I suppose I would miss you", and he turns around; still one of my favourite examples of two characters saying "I love you" without using these words.

In another fandom entirely: Neat article by Russell T. Davies and Aidan Gillen on the creation of QUEER AS FOLK.

In which I'm seriously starting to wimper about two characters.


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I only had the chance to watch this now, due to Darth Real Life.

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Due to having been on the road, I only got to watch this one now.

( Well now... )

I had the chance to watch one more tv episode before hitting the road again, and thus:

( it's the first time we did this, isn't it? )

Alas, I won't be able to watch The Good Wife or Manhattan for another week (don't spoil me!), but I can get a hold of the Sleepy Hollow season opener; watch this space. Meanwhile, the weather is splendid, meaning the Aged Parents & self spend most of this week outdoors, and thus there isn't much internet for me. But there is some.

Since the Yuletide nominations are open now, Penny Dreadful fans, shouldn't we coordinate our efforts to get as many characters as possible nominated? (However, I'll have to drop my Vikings intentions since this year you can nominate three fandoms, no more. I definitely want Penny Dreadful and The Americans, which leaves me with just one slot for one of my cracky historical RPF ideas.

Also: it's always a pleasure when a poster you appreciate discovers an old show of yours for the first time. local_max is watching Twin Peaks, and has been writing Twin Peaks meta already. The owls are not what they seem!

Lastly: for some reason, I can't copy a link to The Guardian anymore on this iPad since the latest update, so, without links: you may or may not have heard about the current kerfuffle that unfolded when Hilary Mantel's short story The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher and an interview accompagnying it in which she mentioned having carried it with her for thirty years got published. Now on the one hand, as Lisa Appignanesi points out in one of the commenting articles I can't link, either, given that assassination plots against public figures who did in fact not get assassinated have a long tradition in fiction, both of the written, tv and movie kind (she mentions The Day of the Jackal for Charles de Gaulle, and Nicholas Baker's 2004 take on the assassination of George W. Bush, which didn't get him called "sick and deranged" or in need of a therapist or a visit by the coppers). But on the other, the interview with Mantel that went with the publication of the story contained something I objected to as well, and it wasn't the idea of killing off Margaret T. in fiction. (Or for that matter, anyone in fiction. I mean, were it a public figure I actually care about, like, say, Patrick Stewart, I certainly wouldn't read it, but I wouldn't call the pitchforks, either.) No, it's Mantel something I also recall Antonia Fraser saying once, and several others when commenting on Thatcher: calling her a "psychological transvestite" (or, to give the context: The idea that women must imitate men to succeed is anti-feminist. She was not of woman born. She was a psychological transvestite. (Mantel) or "honorary male" (Fraser, who also called Elizabeth Tudor this when comparing her to Mary Stuart), in other words, a woman who isn't really a woman, not entitled to be treated as a woman. Which, just: no. "Woman" isn't a title you can deserve or can be discarded of.

Speculating, I would guess where this comes from: if you're a woman seeing yourself as a feminist, and loathe a female politician, you're unconformtably aware that there is an eons old misogynistic tradition there of vilifiying any woman in power. On the other hand, this politician truly does do and say things you can't stomach, and which you'd have no problem attacking were they voiced and done by a male politician. So your psychological and emotional out is to declare that this woman doesn't deserve any type of female solidarity because she's not truly a woman. I get the mechanism of that, but that doesn't make it less objectionable for me, because, to repeat: nobody gets to decide who is or isn't a woman. Margaret Thatcher did a great many things which left lasting damage to British society. She also was beyond any doubt a woman. (And let's not even get into the use of "transvestite" as a negative.) And it should be possible to hold forth on why her policies were objectionable without feeling the urge to strip her of her gender.