Media habits.
May. 28th, 2013 09:42 pmThe only good thing to waking up at five in the morning on Sunday from absolutely vicious period cramps was realizing I had enough time to watch the fourth season of Arrested Development before any spoilers hit. The last twenty minutes of the last episode were the hardest in that regard. It's very much not a show I can watch casually - it's not designed that way, and in my case, it's the only way I can stomach a lot of it. The aggressive ignorance and willful blindness to reality gets under my skin and makes it hard to want to go back to watching, unless I'm trying to finish up the current season.
It's good, almost infuriatingly so. It doesn't appeal to me as a piece of comedy so much as it does as a piece of storytelling. The intricacies and repeating motifs and jigsaw nature of the plot - the closest I can come to thinking of a similar experience is reading long-running comic book series collections out of order, like the second half of the 1980s X-Men comics, then the first half of the 1970s, then the rest of the 1980s, the 1990s, then back to the 1970s. The way the gaps get filled in, with allusions and history and characters' backstories unfurling and present behaviors suddenly making sense. Arrested Development is a bit like that. It's as close as I've come to getting back that feeling of comic book reading, which I love with all my heart.
That said, my usual Sunday plot-heavy, character-driven, intricately-crafted TV is Game of Thrones, which lead to a few wires being crossed. Mostly because while both shows are deeply committed to exploring unhealthy codependent relationships, on Game of Thrones, they're typically sexual as well. This then lead me to realize that if Michael ever embraced his natural inclinations for evil, and possibly allying with his mother, there'd be absolutely no stopping him. He'd still retain his scruples, of course, but be absolutely ruthless when it comes to taking care of anyone getting in his way. Which would mostly be the rest of the family, but I'm sure he'd find ways to work around that. I suppose I'll just have to sit back and wait for people with more time and drive to get these fics done.
(And it's true: everything's better with superpowers.)
It's good, almost infuriatingly so. It doesn't appeal to me as a piece of comedy so much as it does as a piece of storytelling. The intricacies and repeating motifs and jigsaw nature of the plot - the closest I can come to thinking of a similar experience is reading long-running comic book series collections out of order, like the second half of the 1980s X-Men comics, then the first half of the 1970s, then the rest of the 1980s, the 1990s, then back to the 1970s. The way the gaps get filled in, with allusions and history and characters' backstories unfurling and present behaviors suddenly making sense. Arrested Development is a bit like that. It's as close as I've come to getting back that feeling of comic book reading, which I love with all my heart.
That said, my usual Sunday plot-heavy, character-driven, intricately-crafted TV is Game of Thrones, which lead to a few wires being crossed. Mostly because while both shows are deeply committed to exploring unhealthy codependent relationships, on Game of Thrones, they're typically sexual as well. This then lead me to realize that if Michael ever embraced his natural inclinations for evil, and possibly allying with his mother, there'd be absolutely no stopping him. He'd still retain his scruples, of course, but be absolutely ruthless when it comes to taking care of anyone getting in his way. Which would mostly be the rest of the family, but I'm sure he'd find ways to work around that. I suppose I'll just have to sit back and wait for people with more time and drive to get these fics done.
(And it's true: everything's better with superpowers.)
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