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on platonic m/f and fun TV
Apr. 26th, 2013 03:43 pmSo right now is a great time for platonic m/f friendship on TV, much to my joy!
In the last couple weeks we watched all that's out of Elementary - highly recommended! It does a lot of remarkable things effortlessly and unselfconsciously. Lucy Liu's Joan Watson is amazing and awesome, not the least of which for being a relatable, recognizable human being who also happens to be an Asian-American woman. While when the show was first announced I was disappointed by the changes they'd made to Watson's character (ex-doctor and not ex-military), in the context of the show and the version of Sherlock Holmes they're telling, it makes sense. And she is still absolutely Watson, long-suffering and loyal, if a bit snarkier about it than some.
But then that's par for the course - one of the things that makes Elementary's Sherlock so great is because everyone actually calls him on his shit. And he actually listens (sometimes, to some people), and he tries (even if he doesn't always succeed). ( More squee, no spoilers to speak of )
We've also started watching SyFy's Warehouse 13, and while that isn't what I'd call good TV - oh my god it is so frigging cute it's almost painful. It's not for everyone - it's corny and shallow and obvious, but if you like cute made-family teams being cute together while dealing with unabashedly implausible scifi artifacts, you owe it to yourself to watch this show.
It does have a couple other points to recommend it. Not only does it have more major female characters than male for a good part of the show, but the central partnership is a male and a female agent, both young and white and attractive, who bicker but love working together and love each other and have ABSOLUTELY ZERO UST. Their relationship is sibling-esque all the way without any hint of romance; they're genuinely happy and supportive for their partner whenever they find romance elsewhere. Meanwhile to make up for the lack of sexual chemistry there, it is positively bubbling between the female agent and H.G. Wells. Who is a (canonically bi) woman. Played by the preternaturally gorgeous Jaime Murray of Hustle. (She's also kind of an arch-villain, sometimes, depending, which tension only ups the femslashiness (very deliberate femslash; at her introduction she was briefly paired with Pete, but since then it's Myka who she has all the intense interactions with.))(And while I don't think that 'ship has actually gone canon, H.G./Myka is the most popular pairing in the fandom by an order of magnitude...)
But mostly it's just adorable action-comedy with lots of hugs and goofy scifi peril to the characters in every episode (I swear, every single ep has at least a moment of h/c or worry with someone). It reminds me more of SFC's old Invisible Man than perhaps any other show I can think of; it's a show that knows exactly what it is, and is very happy to be that, with no ambitions to take itself more seriously. And since I adored I-man, and am a sucker for cute teamy h/c, yeah, am enjoying the heck out of W13!
In the last couple weeks we watched all that's out of Elementary - highly recommended! It does a lot of remarkable things effortlessly and unselfconsciously. Lucy Liu's Joan Watson is amazing and awesome, not the least of which for being a relatable, recognizable human being who also happens to be an Asian-American woman. While when the show was first announced I was disappointed by the changes they'd made to Watson's character (ex-doctor and not ex-military), in the context of the show and the version of Sherlock Holmes they're telling, it makes sense. And she is still absolutely Watson, long-suffering and loyal, if a bit snarkier about it than some.
But then that's par for the course - one of the things that makes Elementary's Sherlock so great is because everyone actually calls him on his shit. And he actually listens (sometimes, to some people), and he tries (even if he doesn't always succeed). ( More squee, no spoilers to speak of )
We've also started watching SyFy's Warehouse 13, and while that isn't what I'd call good TV - oh my god it is so frigging cute it's almost painful. It's not for everyone - it's corny and shallow and obvious, but if you like cute made-family teams being cute together while dealing with unabashedly implausible scifi artifacts, you owe it to yourself to watch this show.
It does have a couple other points to recommend it. Not only does it have more major female characters than male for a good part of the show, but the central partnership is a male and a female agent, both young and white and attractive, who bicker but love working together and love each other and have ABSOLUTELY ZERO UST. Their relationship is sibling-esque all the way without any hint of romance; they're genuinely happy and supportive for their partner whenever they find romance elsewhere. Meanwhile to make up for the lack of sexual chemistry there, it is positively bubbling between the female agent and H.G. Wells. Who is a (canonically bi) woman. Played by the preternaturally gorgeous Jaime Murray of Hustle. (She's also kind of an arch-villain, sometimes, depending, which tension only ups the femslashiness (very deliberate femslash; at her introduction she was briefly paired with Pete, but since then it's Myka who she has all the intense interactions with.))(And while I don't think that 'ship has actually gone canon, H.G./Myka is the most popular pairing in the fandom by an order of magnitude...)
But mostly it's just adorable action-comedy with lots of hugs and goofy scifi peril to the characters in every episode (I swear, every single ep has at least a moment of h/c or worry with someone). It reminds me more of SFC's old Invisible Man than perhaps any other show I can think of; it's a show that knows exactly what it is, and is very happy to be that, with no ambitions to take itself more seriously. And since I adored I-man, and am a sucker for cute teamy h/c, yeah, am enjoying the heck out of W13!
