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Spermanent Record
Mar 28, 2007
I interviewed a NK escapee who came to my school and made a thread. Then life got in the way and the translation had to be postponed. I did finish it in the end, but nobody is going to pay 10 bux to update my.avatar
I'm happy for anyone enjoying the show but it's really not keeping my attention anymore. I used to set time aside to watch every ep carefully and then go read the discussion in the thread but now it's been relegated to the exact same place Dexter was from season 6 onwards. Put it on in the background, and hope it interests me enough to distract me from whatever else I'm doing.

It's happening less and less now. Only once last episode. The first half of the board room scene, with the powerful men facing off against the apparently weak woman was excellent camp, and delivered with more flair than just an upside down camera. Lange and Bassett brought some real joy to the scene. The writers ruined it in the second half by reducing the witch hunter's motivations to complete gibberish but for a few minutes there was something electric on the screen.

Nothing else in the episode could really be classified as camp. Camp needs passion; it needs to be contradictory and exciting and peverse. Most of all it needs something to celebrate. People seem to be mistaking trash for camp. Cathy Bate's scenes last episode could have been great camp but her performance seems to suggest that she's just as confused about her character as we are. There was no flair in the (presumably) final reveal that she's been bad all along. She returns to her torturing, not with any glee but with a dour expression, if this was camp she would be reveling in her evil, but here it's presented as the logical conclusion to her murderous compulsions. We're supposed to have faith in the diegetic interiority of the character when we haven't been given a reason to. If this were camp her present day embracing of evil would be a celebration of her EXTERIORITY but it really, really wasn't. We don't need to know how the monster was created or why it decided to continue to be one, we need to love the monster! That is the exact opposite of what the attic scene was going for.

This is trash, not camp; we're not celebrating the performance as she flip flops between comedic foil and villain, we're grasping for some kind of narrative justification for a nonsensical character, if this really were camp, it wouldn't matter but the tonal problems in that unpleasant attic scene with the gardener toppled over all the good work she'd been doing this season. They tried to bring it back around again with the doll and the pills but it was so overplayed that it left me cold. They had their chance and they wasted it.

There's nothing knowing about this season. It's a the kind of train wreck you get when people with good intentions completely lose control of their material. It OUGHT to be campy but it's really just kind of sad.

Spermanent Record fucked around with this message at 03:34 on Jan 17, 2014

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Spermanent Record
Mar 28, 2007
I interviewed a NK escapee who came to my school and made a thread. Then life got in the way and the translation had to be postponed. I did finish it in the end, but nobody is going to pay 10 bux to update my.avatar
How many TV shows have used the line, "A storm is coming." And then never actually delivered on the threat?

I remember Babylon 5 did it years ago then the "storm (the Shadow war)" was actually the weakest part of the entire series. The build up was way better. Marcus and his rangers were a bunch of tools.
Dexter did it very recently when the super-hyped "storm" was a 30 second CGI shot that ended up being completely irrelevant..
This show has delivered a storm of poo poo, but that doesn't count.

edit : oh, turns out TV Tropes has a list, of course, Heroes would be on that list.

Spermanent Record fucked around with this message at 05:40 on Jan 25, 2014

Spermanent Record
Mar 28, 2007
I interviewed a NK escapee who came to my school and made a thread. Then life got in the way and the translation had to be postponed. I did finish it in the end, but nobody is going to pay 10 bux to update my.avatar
If it's Zoe then it's bad because her only purpose this season has been to hang over the show as the probable next supreme, making it a boring non-surprise.

If it's not Zoe then it's bad because they wasted a good deal of screen time on a non-character that didn't really do anything beyond discover that she had more power than she could possibly have imagined. And the twist will be...sucks to be you, you didn't have that much power after all.

Either way it's bad.

Spermanent Record
Mar 28, 2007
I interviewed a NK escapee who came to my school and made a thread. Then life got in the way and the translation had to be postponed. I did finish it in the end, but nobody is going to pay 10 bux to update my.avatar
So why did Myrtle commit suicide again? I mean I know why according to the show, but why did they think that was something worth filming?

Dexter has taught me not to stick with bad shows. I'm out until the end of season 4 now, if it's good then I'll hear about it.

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