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eumeliaSo. That happened.
Where to begin?
Max! Yes, more of this please! Wasn't he a delight and a decent person throughout, even if he had selfish motivations. I like seeing him all crushy and sweet on someone. It also undermines the notion that the geeky fanboy is incapable of desire.
Also, I'm a fan of empathy and Max does it so so well. It's one of the reasons I love the scenes between Max and Steve - Max gets Steve to be much mushier than otherwise - and scenes between Max and Danny, it's like a battle of compassion style between the two of them.
Of course, in this episode there wasn't a whole lot of compassion, except between Max and Sabrina the bank teller.
Two men dying of cancer in one episode and they were the most selfish assholes ever. Not that I begrudge anyone being an asshole for any reason, but I was supposed to feel compelled to feel for a man who couldn't give a fuck about traumatising other people so he could go out in a blaze of glory and for a wet worker who decided that cancer wad just too slow?
Yeah, no.
No to mention that seeing as there was no evidence other than Steve's conjecture regarding Mister Murderer's children, I'm not buying it. Sounds like wishful thinking on Steve's part if you ask me, and considering there is only one child in his life that we know of, clearly Steve was thinking of what Danny would do (maybe what Steve himself would do), with regard to Grace.
The dual plots was crud. I mean, total shite.
It was marginally interesting when the model, she cannot act holy shit, spoke about selling a fantasy and how that relates to the product and how scary that can be as a person embodying the fantasy.
The above put into focus the different fantasies men and women are presented as wanting in the context of this episode.
Despite it being a filler episode which had moments in which I was ready to reach for the bleach, this episode was interesting in the way it talked about the so called gender binary and the way Danny maneuvered between objectifying the models and actually treating them like people.
This episode was extremely faily over all, but let's talk about the fact that the fantasies that motivate the men, are being heroic and leaving behind a legacy with which to be remembered. The fantasies that motivate women are to have a "friend", or putting it differently, a relationship.
As an aside, I can't tell you how anxious I was that H50 was going to present the stalker as a "killer lesbian", I'm not convinced they didn't, but at least it wasn't explicit?
Back to the binary.
The fantasies as they are shown here also delineate the differences in the way men and women handle agency. The two cancer patients have, in essence, lost agency over their lives and the only thing they can control is how they die, any and all other damage is collateral. Women on the other hand; they wait, they react and need to be rescued by a man, and men in this context, have control over who lives and who dies.
The fantasy the model talks about is the fantasy in which a woman is made beautiful not for herself, but for those who look at her. She is powerless under the gaze that not only perceives her as a fantasy, but reduces her to one.
The stalker woman wanted a friend, but the fantasy of the model wasn't available to her, because the only way in which she could have her would be to have control over her life or her death.
An option that is only open to men in the context of this particular episode, making it nearly diametrically opposite to last week's ep and the ethos of H50 in general.
It is within these two different fantasy schemes that Danny swung widely. It is no secret that Danny objectifies women, he's done it from the Pilot onwards. Who doesn't remember his appreciative gaze of Kono. That's one aspect. The other is that he has a daughter and he knows men like him and boys like he was are dangerous. I think he does a bad job of balancing his respect for women as people and being the product of a society in which women are consumer products.
Regardless, in the ep, both Danny and Steve have the power to decide who lives and who dies. And it's interesting to note that in both cases it is to keep the villains from enacting fantasies of power and agency.
Something to make a note of for future eps and to think about retroactively.
All in all the episode was crap, with shinning moments from Max, Fong, nude and tripping criminals, and the really awesome roof top foot chase.
Hired killer with cancer is pretty spry for a man being treated for terminal cancer *snort*.
Tumblr crosspost
Where to begin?
Max! Yes, more of this please! Wasn't he a delight and a decent person throughout, even if he had selfish motivations. I like seeing him all crushy and sweet on someone. It also undermines the notion that the geeky fanboy is incapable of desire.
Also, I'm a fan of empathy and Max does it so so well. It's one of the reasons I love the scenes between Max and Steve - Max gets Steve to be much mushier than otherwise - and scenes between Max and Danny, it's like a battle of compassion style between the two of them.
Of course, in this episode there wasn't a whole lot of compassion, except between Max and Sabrina the bank teller.
Two men dying of cancer in one episode and they were the most selfish assholes ever. Not that I begrudge anyone being an asshole for any reason, but I was supposed to feel compelled to feel for a man who couldn't give a fuck about traumatising other people so he could go out in a blaze of glory and for a wet worker who decided that cancer wad just too slow?
Yeah, no.
No to mention that seeing as there was no evidence other than Steve's conjecture regarding Mister Murderer's children, I'm not buying it. Sounds like wishful thinking on Steve's part if you ask me, and considering there is only one child in his life that we know of, clearly Steve was thinking of what Danny would do (maybe what Steve himself would do), with regard to Grace.
The dual plots was crud. I mean, total shite.
It was marginally interesting when the model, she cannot act holy shit, spoke about selling a fantasy and how that relates to the product and how scary that can be as a person embodying the fantasy.
The above put into focus the different fantasies men and women are presented as wanting in the context of this episode.
Despite it being a filler episode which had moments in which I was ready to reach for the bleach, this episode was interesting in the way it talked about the so called gender binary and the way Danny maneuvered between objectifying the models and actually treating them like people.
This episode was extremely faily over all, but let's talk about the fact that the fantasies that motivate the men, are being heroic and leaving behind a legacy with which to be remembered. The fantasies that motivate women are to have a "friend", or putting it differently, a relationship.
As an aside, I can't tell you how anxious I was that H50 was going to present the stalker as a "killer lesbian", I'm not convinced they didn't, but at least it wasn't explicit?
Back to the binary.
The fantasies as they are shown here also delineate the differences in the way men and women handle agency. The two cancer patients have, in essence, lost agency over their lives and the only thing they can control is how they die, any and all other damage is collateral. Women on the other hand; they wait, they react and need to be rescued by a man, and men in this context, have control over who lives and who dies.
The fantasy the model talks about is the fantasy in which a woman is made beautiful not for herself, but for those who look at her. She is powerless under the gaze that not only perceives her as a fantasy, but reduces her to one.
The stalker woman wanted a friend, but the fantasy of the model wasn't available to her, because the only way in which she could have her would be to have control over her life or her death.
An option that is only open to men in the context of this particular episode, making it nearly diametrically opposite to last week's ep and the ethos of H50 in general.
It is within these two different fantasy schemes that Danny swung widely. It is no secret that Danny objectifies women, he's done it from the Pilot onwards. Who doesn't remember his appreciative gaze of Kono. That's one aspect. The other is that he has a daughter and he knows men like him and boys like he was are dangerous. I think he does a bad job of balancing his respect for women as people and being the product of a society in which women are consumer products.
Regardless, in the ep, both Danny and Steve have the power to decide who lives and who dies. And it's interesting to note that in both cases it is to keep the villains from enacting fantasies of power and agency.
Something to make a note of for future eps and to think about retroactively.
All in all the episode was crap, with shinning moments from Max, Fong, nude and tripping criminals, and the really awesome roof top foot chase.
Hired killer with cancer is pretty spry for a man being treated for terminal cancer *snort*.
Tumblr crosspost
no subject
Date: 2012-12-05 06:57 pm (UTC)Otherwise, yeah, the episode was not great. The model talking about being an object of fantasy was pretty clearly an insert for the purpose of putting a fig leaf on the fact that they were doing this plot for fanservice. And the cancer plot was... nonsensical.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-05 07:15 pm (UTC)The VS models weren't there for fan service per say, they were written in because there was a VS runway show later in the week and H50 was used as a promo.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-05 07:58 pm (UTC)The models were there for the promo, yes, but they were still there as fan service, in my opinion, because of all the time they spent in costume or on the beach at work. In my opinion, though.