news from television land

[aria]

i. My mother, on Community: "So when are Troy and Abed actually going to start dating?" This from the woman who loves both Life on Mars and White Collar, but thinks that Sam/Gene and the OT3 are far-fetched notions. Hey, Community writers! My het-centric mum thinks it should be canon Troy/Abed time!

ii. After ... roughly six years of a quiet internal will-I-won't-I and laughing at the fandom from afar, I ... appear to be watching Supernatural. I am watching it in a way where I am vetting episodes via wiki summary, and mostly watching the arc-plot stuff or the episodes with guest stars I like, and it is entirely possible that I will hit "Can't do this, too many dead women," sooner rather than later but on the other hand I watched all of s1 Game of Thrones. In any case, this television viewing brought to you by Dragon*Con, or more specifically Becca and Pali's two-hour late-night pitch about a show of, yeah, problematic stuff, but also codependency and moral ambiguity and other stupid things I love. And also Mark Sheppard's face. MARK SHEPPARD, WHY DO I HAVE TO WAIT SO MANY SEASONS FOR YOUR FACE.

iii. I'm not actually sure I have a third television thing! But it seems asymmetrical otherwise. Eh, it's okay, I should be devoting more energy to writing than to watching things anyway.

Comments

[aria]

DEAN. DEAN IS A PROBLEM. By which I mean years of observation have told me that Dean is nearly everyone's favorite, and just from a description of him I was like "...but why?" and NOW I KNOW. Oh my god I want to draw little hearts around him. Even though he would not appreciate it, and probably objectify me for afters.

I am on 1x09 right now, in fact! And all the others you mentioned are also on my queue. :)

[rusty_halo]

Yay 1x09! A feast of woobie!Dean. I think it's the first of many times he tears up in extreme close-up. :)

I was so not expecting to want to draw little hearts around him! He's such an asshole on the surface, yet such a ridiculous woobie underneath, and a complete goofball, and the show just loves zooming in on his big green eyes and freckles and eyelashes and those lips and then breaking his heart and making him cry and throwing him into walls and I don't even know, it's just perfect. I love how the show revels in what a mess he is instead of trying to convince the audience that he's always right.

I think the character actually does have interesting aspects in terms of gender--he's got this extreme overcompensating performance of hypermasculinity mixed with the fact that he's actually filling all the traditionally feminine roles in the family, he's the caretaker and the peacemaker and the self-sacrificing one, etc. So it's complicated, but yeah, still both the character and the show cross the sexism line for me way too often. I definitely can't blame the people who don't want to put up with it. (One rec would be to skip 3x06 and 3x09 btw, maybe read the ep summary of 3x09 for plot stuff but don't actually watch it.)