on following the fannish crowd

[xparrot]

Just started watching Person of Interest because everyone else is doing it!

As much as the show's trappings scream "gritty", I really can't tell if it's meant to be taken seriously at all, and spent most of s1 trying to figure that out. It's shot super dark and ~dramatic~ but the only way it makes sense to me is that it's a comic book, and knows it's a comic book, and just is having fun playing it straight. Jonathan Nolan is Christopher Nolan's brother and the co-writer and writer of his last two Batman movies, and this show is pretty obviously, "that was cool, it should be a TV show!" Which is the only way I can watch it. (And so whenever I shriek about the unlikeliness of people wielding machine guns on mysteriously empty NY streets in broad daylight, Gnine reminds me that it's actually Gotham City, so that makes sense!)

Being a comic book, there are Good Guys and Bad Guys. So the fact that all the heroes kill people constantly doesn't bother me as much, because everyone they kill must de facto be Bad Guys. It cracks me up how bad the Bad Guys are, too. Not just the crazy head honchos but all the henchmen and hitmen - every single killer shown, other than Our Heroes, have no compunctions about killing anybody - or more often everybody! Repeatedly there are cases where the target marked for death is with a bunch of other people, and the solution at that point invariably is to slaughter everybody, or at least make a good go of it. And killing innocent people, women, kids - no problem! So it's hard to feel bad when they get taken out.

It's the kind of show that my own mood matters very much in how I react to it - I know that sometimes I pretty much would've hated it, because it does so much that does bother me at times. (I don't like homicidal heroes, and Reese's gf being fridged in the pilot nearly made me turn it off...) But right now ridiculous fictional morality and codependent maladjusted outcasts is apparently what I'm in the mood for. Finch & Reese can't help but push my "most important person" button - I'm not sure I can slash them (Finch reads as pretty ace to me - fiancee notwithstanding; I can easily read that as a platonic romance ) but their whole not-having-anyone-but-each-other-no-really-NO-ONE thing...yeah. Especially Finch, since he doesn't do most of the helping personally, and even Carter and Fusco think of him as basically a safety on the loose cannon that is John Reese - he vanishes and Reese is the only one who knows or who really would care, but Reese cares a whole lot to make up for it. Aww. (yeah, I'm so predictable...)

I also suspect it helps that I never watched enough Lost to get to Michael Emerson's character (or at least don't remember if I did) - Finch is my favorite in POI, but it sounds like his char in Lost was such that it might've taken a while to win me over had I known him then. And Reese took a season but I'm coming 'round to him; he's so very inappropriately amused by things, up to and including his own incredible creepiness. (He reminds me of John Sheppard, except that Reese's character is clearly meant to come across as creepily weird/borderline sociopathic/back-away-slowly-and-don't-meet-his-eyes, while as Sheppard should've been a standard heroic leader and someone - Joe Flannigan? The writers? - didn't get the memo...)

So far s2 is shaping up to be fun, and I am especially enjoying Carter and Fusco bonding over annoyance at their mutual friends. (Carter and Fusco are both great characters, more original than the leads - Carter is one of those chars who'd be dime-a-dozen if she were a guy, but as a woman is pretty unique; and Fusco is fun for being a pretty classic background redemption-ish character who actually survives his redemption and becomes one of the leads. And I'm wondering if Reese's treating him as an asset might change. The "I only have one friend." *outraged gag mumble* "Okay maybe two friends" was hilarious.)

I also am wondering where the POI/White Collar/Burn Notice crossover is - you know, the one where Peter Burke's number comes up, and then Reese discovers that Burke's partner Neal Caffrey is also aware of the trouble and is calling in a favor from an old Agency acquaintance of his down in Miami...(Michael Weston and Reese both served in Eastern Europe, and by my calculation had at least an overlapping year before Michael got burned...)

That, and the Sentinel AU (The show reminds me quite a bit of The Sentinel, between the comic-book cops-and-robbers and the bugfuck ex-Ranger hero + weird nerdy sidekick, and having diamonds of pure fanbait squee buried amidst lots of urgent and somewhat nonsensical action...)

(Also, if there's any good Finch h/c out there, I, uh, wouldn't mind being hooked up...)

Comments

[sholio]

My earlier comments about POI notwithstanding, I actually do like the show (although I'm still not enthusiastic enough about it to have gone ahead and sought out season two yet). I am vastly relieved that I'm not the only one who finds Reese creepy and sociopathic, though. There is something about him in a lot of his scenes that positively screams CREEPY STALKER, GET THE MACE! and I truly can't figure out he's supposed to come off that way, or if I'm reacting to something about the actor or ... I just don't know.

Anyway, I do think it's a show that you have to be in the right mindset for, and for me, that mindset is basically laughing at the show's utter over-the-topness (do you see what I mean about this being the best show since Highlander for mocking the hero's angst? SO MUCH AAAAANGST!). On the other hand, I do genuinely love Carter and Fusco as characters, and I am slowwwwwly being won over by Finch -- I have exactly the problem you were talking about with Michael Emerson on Lost, because I absolutely LOATHED his character on Lost, not a "love to hate him" kind of way, but more of a "borderline triggery to the point where I had to leave the room during some of his scenes" kind of way. So it took me probably the whole first season to warm up to Finch on a personal level, even while finding him quite entertaining as a character. (The baby episode, bwahahaha. BEST BABY EPISODE EVER.)

The show actually does remind me of Burn Notice quite a bit, except that Burn Notice is so much more surface flash and shine, and doesn't take itself seriously AT ALL, where POI seems to have bought into its own grimdarkness. That, I guess, is the level on which POI doesn't work for me, because it really does seem to believe that it's serious and deep, and it's just NOT. But it is quite entertaining (even though I end up feeling terribly sorry for Fusco, who is basically the show's, and Reese's, butt-monkey a lot of the time ...!).

tl;dr I'm glad you're watching because I rather suspect that you'll be a fun person to talk to about the show; I don't want to offend more serious fans with my generally irreverent take on it, but I really do find the show quite entertaining, though sometimes in a "so bad it's good" kind of way. And I do like most of the characters! Given another season or three, I might even like Reese; he is, at the very least, fun to watch (though I have to consciously make myself NOT remember that it's the same guy who played Jesus in Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ, and got struck by lightning twice in the filming of ...).

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Heh - I admit, some of this post started as a reply to one of your POI posts - and then I realized the post were a couple weeks old, and I was going off on tangents anyway, so posted it on its own. But there are bits that are direct reactions to your post. (Especially Michael Emerson - I noticed you didn't really reference Finch at all, except to say that his char on Lost disturbed you, and I've had that before, having trouble separating an actor from a previous char.)

To be honest, I really cannot tell if POI actually takes itself seriously, or is just faking it? There is so much that is ridiculous, and some bits of dark comedy that are clearly meant to be comedic - unlike, say, BSG, which came across as VERY VERY SERIOUS, I kind of suspect POI is aware of its ridiculousness? It's certainly not trying very hard to be deep or dark - it's got such black & white morality, and while the chars have bad things in their past, in the present it's actually been pretty bright for them; they're all still alive, and haven't suffered any significant personal losses (unless I'm forgetting something, which I might be...)

I might be wrong, they might think they're creating great drama here. But that's not the sense I get off it myself; it really doesn't feel that much darker than Burn Notice (actually, if anything BN comes across to me as brighter in appearance but darker in attitude...)

--And Reese, yeeeeeah...if he's not meant to be creepy as hell they are really dropping the ball there. It's at least 50% his creepy creepy creepy whispering voice, and that has to be intentional...I think? (...this might be a show that I don't want to read anything about the actors/writing/behind the scenes, because if I find out they are taking it seriously, and Reese is meant to be immediately likable rather than freakish, it will decrease my enjoyment quite a bit ^^;;;;)(and yeah, I looked up the actor briefly and what I read made me decide not to read any more about him, at least. Oh well... ^^;;;;;;)

[sholio]

it really doesn't feel that much darker than Burn Notice (actually, if anything BN comes across to me as brighter in appearance but darker in attitude...)

You know, it's interesting that you put it that way, because I hadn't really thought about it quite that way, but that sort of puts into perspective some of the differences in the way I'm reacting to the two shows, and especially to the protagonists.

It's been impossible for me not to compare Michael Weston and Reese in my head from the very first episode of POI that I watched; they're both burned-out, emotionally damaged, flat-affect ex-spies turned vigilantes. But Michael feels way more ... grounded, to me, I guess. More plausible. And "plausible" is not a word that I typically apply to Burn Notice. *g* But one thing I do think it does fairly well, and it's something I've noticed about the show from the beginning, is that it does a pretty good job of depicting someone who is so emotionally damaged from years of killing people and never being able to form close attachments that he really has a hard time pretending to be "normal" anymore. And it's fairly subtle. I don't really like Michael Weston; I don't think you're supposed to. But I think the show does a pretty good job of making him feel believable as the kind of person that he is. You get a pretty strong impression of Michael as a guy who doesn't really relate to normal people very well, and doesn't want to; what he does for fun mostly is work out and/or try to extricate himself from entanglements that he doesn't want to be entangled in. And try to kill people for money. (He's one of the few characters on TV who is in good shape and a good fighter that you actually SEE working on it; I think that's one of the things that makes him feel more believable to me than a character like that ought to be.) I know absolutely nothing about former CIA operatives turned mercs, but Michael is pretty close to what I would imagine a person like that might be in real life.

Reese ... isn't. At all. Where Michael's emotional damage is pretty subtle, Reese's is all over the place, and like the badness of the bad guys, it's just so over-the-top that it's kind of funny. It's not enough for him to be isolated, he's got to be THE MOST ISOLATED PERSON EVER. It's not enough to have tragedy in his past, it's got to be EVERYONE HE KNOWS DIED HORRIBLY AND IT WAS HIS FAULT. And you never (or almost never) see him doing anything normal. I actually spent a number of episodes wondering if Reese owned a car or if he just clung to the tops of buses or something, because you never see him get anywhere; he just shows up when he's needed, magically.

... I think you're right that it's difficult to relate to POI as anything other than a cartoon of a show. I keep feeling like everything I say about it is going to make it sound like I hate it, because I really DON'T, but I also keep getting lured into WANTING the show to be more coherent and sensible and plausible than it is, and it's just ... not. Embracing its earnestly serious goofiness is probably the only way to enjoy it long-term. :D

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Burn Notice being, weirdly, more realistic - yes, totally agreed. With characters if not with the action or plot - not only Michael, but Michael's mother, who is both a unique character on TV, and also convincing for who she is. (Actually, Michael is one of the few heroes on TV who comes from a physically abusive childhood who is believable as such to almost disturbing levels, to the point that I wonder who on the show is writing from personal experience. Because his childhood isn't played up for angst a lot, it's more just a fact of who he is, part of what shaped him; and the way it shaped him is believable.)

While as Reese - well, Reese is Batman! His emotional damage is wackily out of proportion to (what we know of) his past! Especially given that Reese apparently used to be someone relatively normal and got warped by the Agency and his fridged gf (while as BN makes it clear that Michael was never "normal" and that's the main reason he ended up in the career he did.) And yeah, whenever you do see him doing something normal (like cooking breakfast, which he keeps doing?) it feels like whiplash.

So yeah - at least for me, it feels like, hmm, an adult cartoon? It's got themes which should be serious but its handling of them is pretty consistently silly. And my own feeling is that this is intentional (and I really don't want to know otherwise, because I'd enjoy it less if I knew the creators thought they were making Great Drama!)

Semi-relatedly, the bro (who hasn't really been watching the show but sometimes is on his computer when we watch) keeps being freaked out by their computer technobabble being weirdly accurate - there's been a bit of super-hacking and AI stuffs, but between the Machine's long-term machine-learning and a lot of the dialogue apparently being the real deal rather than gobbledygook, it's surprised him?

[sholio]

Yeah, I agree with you about Michael and his past (and his mother!). I think BN's matter-of-fact approach to Michael's emotional damage is one of the things that makes it feel so believable. The show is not about Michael "getting over" being a damaged person; it's not about him moving past it, or learning to deal with it, or in any way going through a standard TV dealing-with-damage sort of arc. It's just who he is, and it's background to everything he does.

Semi-relatedly, the bro (who hasn't really been watching the show but sometimes is on his computer when we watch) keeps being freaked out by their computer technobabble being weirdly accurate - there's been a bit of super-hacking and AI stuffs, but between the Machine's long-term machine-learning and a lot of the dialogue apparently being the real deal rather than gobbledygook, it's surprised him?

ahahaha, Orion has said much the same! The show drives him crazy with some of its other research!fail (he has said that it reminds him very much of an action fic written by a teenage fangirl, who doesn't understand anything about spies or organized crime or explosives or any of that stuff, but is just throwing in whatever seems cool for the plot). But he says the computer stuff is actually way more accurate than computer stuff on TV normally is; a lot of their basic programming theory is pretty sound.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

--And yeah, I think part of why I'm enjoying POI now is that I don't want a really serious dramatic exploration of this theme; I don't know that I'd enjoy it much (a movie maybe, but not a whole TV show). And I've also been simultaneously watching The Good Wife which is fulfilling my need for believable human drama and shades-of-gray ethics (while still leaning toward the optimistic enough not to depress me). So POI's ridiculousness is in a lot of ways just what I'm in the mood for right now!

[topaz-kat.livejournal.com]

I am not a follower of POI. But I do watch both White Collar and Burn Notice. I can almost see what you're saying regarding Reese and Michael possibly having a working past, but not in a lot of ways. The natures of the shows are very different. For instance, while I can see both the Elizabeth/Peter/Neal and Michael/Fiona/Sam triads, the feel of them is very different to me.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Oh, ye, I agree that WC and BN are quite different shows! But I think the characters and their different ways of relating would play off each other in amusing ways. And POI provides a good connection, because it's set in NYC like WC, but features an ex-CIA agent who could've met Michael ^^

[naye]

Since the only shows you're referencing that I've actually seen are SGA and TS... how worth it would you say this show is? With very limited time resources (in two weeks we've watched ten episodes of our current show - Mushishi, with episodes 20 minutes long!), the "hidden gems" has much less appeal to me than they did when I was looking for ways to kill time.

Which, in a way, makes me feel like I'm missing out, because it's fun to throw yourself into a murky pool full of material and maybe if you swim deep enough there'll be pearls at the bottom - and if there isn't, well, all it takes to make a pearl is a grain of sand. And that's a challenge, that's the shared endeavor of fandom - being given a kiddie pool by TPTB, and turning it into an ocean.

On the other hand, because of time limitations, I've ended up watching things where I get a lot of pleasure out of very little effort, and in a sense, that is also quite nice. Makes me miss out on some fannish things, but not others - Cabin Pressure is brilliant in every single way, and makes me laugh and squee, and I can engage in fandom by sharing those feelings and having them reflected back at me by others.

Anyway, right now the shortlist of things we either are making time for, or have decided to make time for in the near future is:
1) Mushishi
2) Community (once a week)
3) Parks and Recreation (on after Community on Hulu)
4.b) One Piece (on hold while gearing up to dive into Japanese again)
4.a) Playing the One Piece: Pirate Warriors game

Since so many people seem to be getting into POI - would it make a good 5)?

Related: are the main characters both white dudes because if so UM. Might give it an automatic pass. (My reaction to the Star Trek: Into Darkness trailer was a bit of wow, Benedict's hot and a lot of "Into Darkness? More like INTO WHITENESS." Actual quote.)

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

As far as the worth of POI goes...yeah, it's about Sentinel level, a lot of effort for relatively small payoffs. And some of my enjoyment is definitely wanting to be part of fandom (and Teen Wolf didn't catch me that way.)

POI is also two-white-men-saving-the-world, though in its defense the 3rd major character after them is Carter, who is a black female ex-military police detective and as awesome as she sounds (and also not romantically USTed with everyone, though sometimes that feels awkwardly like it's due to her not being pretty-white-girl, since the show USTs the guest stars with the lead.)

We've been watching other stuff too, and while they're not as fandomy, I've really enjoyed and would recommend:

Once Upon a Time - warning that this show is WHITE WHITE WHITE with only limited cause. OTOH the two main heroes are both female, most of the main villains are female, it passes the Bechdel effortlessly every ep and fails the reverse Bechdel more than once, pretty much all these female chars are amazing, and while the canon romances are all f/m there is enough f/f subtext to float a boat crewed by the cast of Utena. As for the show itself - it's silly and it knows it? This sounds odd, but maybe the best thing I can say about it is that I keep expecting it to disappoint me, and then it delights me instead. I would recommend it but with caveats (the race thing, and also in the first season there is a major and annoying arc that concerns cheating, albeit with magical amnesia as a mitigating factor...) It's on s2 now which I've been enjoying even more than s1 (there are bizarre family dynamics that I adore!) Still dreading for it to disappoint me, but for now much enjoying it!

We've also been watching The Good Wife on Gnine's recommendation, which also has epic female characters and f/f friendship (and a bit of canonical f/f though not between leads) and is better racially (Kalinda~!) It's courtroom/lawyer/political drama, quite well done, but yeah, you'd want to be in the mood for that.

Also, not great on the female char side (if oddly better than could be expected of it) but we just rewatched the Fast & the Furious movie series (you know, action movies with cars) to prepare for movie 6 coming out in a couple months, and those movies are, oddly, some of the best racially of any action movie I know of. The first couple star the white cop guy (being crazily slashy with Vin Diesel), but by the 5th movie he's been definitely demoted to Vin Diesel's sidekick and is the only white character in a team of 10 or so. It's pretty much a multi-colored Ocean's 11. (also, just as weirdly, it's one of the few franchises that improves as it goes along - the 5th movie is the most fun by far, completely unexpectedly, which is why we're looking forward to the 6th!) Warnings for a fair bit of laughably blatant T&A, and also being an action movie with cars. Lots of cars. Doing really ridiculous stunts. And sometimes it's prone to taking itself too seriously, though that's erratic and when it's fun, it's quite a lot of fun!

[sholio]

Ooh, I second the rec for Once Upon a Time! Like xparrot, I keep waiting for the show to disappoint me, but aside from some minor stuff in certain plot arcs, it hasn't really -- it keeps surprising and delighting me instead! And I am happily wallowing in the sheer joy of having a huge, majority-female cast in an action-genre show; all kinds of different women, too, from the good/honorable types to the ambiguously good to the redeemably bad to the just plain wicked. It's not the best written show of all time; some of the episodes are sort of painful, and I agree with xparrot about the race thing, which achieves near-SPN levels of "Wait, WHAT, did you really just ...?" at times. I have a feeling that when this show jumps the shark, it's going to jump it hard. But it is definitely my favorite recent TV discovery; I really love it a lot. :D

[cienna.livejournal.com]

Not sure if PoI is intended to be comic book-like or not (although I assume it is) but I've heard a lot of people point out that Finch and Reese are like the Batman and Bruce Wayne versions of Batman's personality. And yeah, I don't think it's really possible to take seriously. Much more like an AU version of New York that's more like Gotham.

As for h/c fic there needs to be more!! But this is my absolute favorite -

Troubleshooting - a very H/Cy gen coda to Bad Code - ep 2x02, so definitely don't read it until you've seen that.

The Significance of Birds - Not technically H/C in that Finch is in the hospital out of his own choosing, but it kind of reads that way to me. Pre-slash

Our Fate is Stored with Taciturn Hearts Gen, H/C

Unfortunately, most of the PoI fics are pretty short and I haven't found any long epics that are all H/C yet, but I'm definitely on the lookout! As is takadainmate!

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Yup, we've been saying they're Batman all along - especially given that Jonathan Nolan's the creator, I don't think that's coincidence!

And yaaaay fic! \o/ Thank you for linkages, will definitely check them out. And if any long h/c epic does pop up tell me or J-chan about it? ^^ (Ahhh where have all the h/c epics gone, sigh~~~~)