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Monday Media Musings - 6/6/22
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Season 5: I don't mind that Midge is often a terrible person -- it makes for an interesting character. What I mind is that she never, ever realizes when she's being a terrible person. I was extremely frustrated with both her and Susie at the beginning of the season for not understanding why Shy cut her from the tour and being so angry with him, and while by the time of Shy's wedding she was showing a glimmer of understanding, I'm still not sure she really got there. She's so very self-absorbed, and while I wish I could believe that was the point, my recent Gilmore Girls rewatch doesn't make me hopeful about Amy Sherman-Palladino's ability to be that self-aware. I still find it an entertaining show, while being glad its next season will be the last.
Star Trek: Discovery, Season 4: Despite some pacing problems (Jessie Gender's otherwise-positive review does a good job detailing them), I thought this was an excellent season, with some beautiful relationships and performances, lots of emotional resonance, and great character development. And the overall season conflict had the most classically Star-Trekian feel of any new Trek series yet. Instead of an interspecies or political conflict that requires war and murders to solve, it's an intergalactic (literally!) misunderstanding that is fixed by communication and understanding. It's an opportunity to show the very best side of the Federation -- and to solve problems using the strengths of the Federation rather than Starfleet, which for all its lofty ideals is still functionally the military. It wasn't perfect -- my biggest gripe is with Book, who is required by the plot to believe that Tarka will go along with any change in plan that doesn't allow him to get his hands on the DMA's power source far longer than it was reasonable to do so; the minute Tarka refused to take the one week reprieve granted by the DMA's position in an uninhabited sector, Book should have known that he was never going to stop and immediately teleported him to Discovery's brig. So that was frustrating. I've also wished from the beginning that we could spend more time getting to know the bridge crew, and while we've started getting nods in that direction, in both S3 and S4 -- Detmer's PTSD from the rough landing in the future, the obvious connection between Detmer and Owosekun (do I ship it? I might ship it), Owosekun's adventures with Burnham in the casino -- I'd love to see them take it further. Much as I hate to see Tilly leave (I love Tilly), I hope they fill the hole she's left by giving us more time with these folks. I've been really happy with Wilson Cruz's promotion to the main cast -- in fact, I think Hugh might be my favorite character -- and it seems like there's room for one or two more secondary characters to move up.
Yellowjackets: I'm not entirely sure what to make of this one. The cast is incredible, the writing and plotting is generally pretty tight, and I'm totally sucked in to the story, but I'm not sure I like it. I was expecting more psychological thriller and suspense, less horror, and it might be further over the horror line than I really wanted. But I'm invested enough in finding out what happens that I expect I'll keep watching. Maybe it's the horror aspects, but I'm far more interested in the present-day fallout than I am in learning the details of what happened in the wilderness. The women's relationships with their families and each other, how much they haven't healed from their trauma, the various mysteries that have been set up, the question of whether any of the others survived to be rescued. Of course it's all intertwined with the past, but I'd rather the past were shorter flashback and the bulk of the story was in the present.
Russian Doll, Season 2: Not quite the amazing experience of the first season, but that's a high bar. Season 1 was about personal trauma; this season is about generational trauma. And it plays some neat tricks with time travel I haven't seen before. I enjoyed both the idea and the visuals of the train gimmick, and the concept that Nadia and Alan were living out important times in the lives of their mothers and grandmothers. Also some fun stuff with the time collapsing in the end, which reminded me a bit of *Being John Malkovich". I have no idea whether they'll try to make a third season work; part of me hopes they don't, but another part of me will spend as much time with Nadia and Alan as the universe will let me.
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And I also agree about wanting to get to know the bridge crew better. As I may’ve said elsewhere at some point, I kinda want season 5 to consist entirely of low-key explorations of the bridge crew and their interactions—no cosmic-scale drama, not even a planet-of-the-week, just the crew hanging out together.
(I can even imagine ways that a season like that could continue to explore the show’s overarching theme: what it means to be the Federation. How do these people from different places and cultures get along? We’ve seen some of that in, for example, the Tilly-and-the-cadets episode, which I thought was unfortunately kind of clunky. But I think the general idea of that could be done much more gracefully and interestingly.)
…Re _Russian Doll_: I had no idea that s2 had happened! I’m surprised that my FB friends haven’t mentioned it. Thanks for talking about it!