Watching Monday

[brigdh]

Sleepy Hollow
2.09
I'd had my hopes up for this episode ever since I'd heard there was going to be one about the Mills's mother, so maybe I just was expecting too much, but I was a little disappointed. I did love a lot of it! The theme of "You Are My Sunshine", the drawing on the wall under the paint, Grace Dixon's journal and the African spell, so many emotional moments between the sisters and their mom, flu!Ichabod was adorable and even moreso when Abbie was tucking him in. I'm not sure Irving escaping really makes sense, but it will allow him to have much more plot, so I support it. I don't even know exactly what put me off. Just not enough... spark, I suppose. At least it managed to have a whole episode in a mental hospital without being horrifyingly offensive! Which is pretty unusual, for TV.


Farscape
1.08 ("That Old Black Magic")
I was doing some traveling this week and so only watched one episode. Which I didn't actually like very much. John and Crais confronting one another was awesome, and I liked the expansion of Crais's motives, but the whole subplot with Zhaan didn't work for me. I don't actually see a connection between torturing innocent animals and friends and fighting an opponent. Though it does seem like it might lead to interesting developments, so I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.

The Judge
ARGH I hated every single person in this movie. So we're totally supposed to feel sorry for this guy because, what? He's old? He's a father? He has cancer? None of that really changes the fact that he KNEW he was having blackouts, decided to drive anyway, and as a direct result of that someone DIED alone in the mud and the rain. Yay that he didn't murder the victim on purpose, I guess? It still doesn't actually make him innocent. And yo, if you're forgetting the names of people you interact with daily, maybe all the cases you've tried recently SHOULD be declared mistrials! I mean, God knows what else he might have forgotten. Ughhhhhh.
...I guess the cinematography was pretty?

Comments

[egelantier.livejournal.com]

this was suuuuuuuuuuch a frustrating episode, because parts of it were GREAT - the acting, the scenes between abbie and jenny, the real emotions, the hug, the feelings - and parts of it were just like... WHAT. like off-hand food drugging because we do that now, apparently, or WHY WAS HAWLEY EVEN IN THIS EP TELL ME, or... i don't know, i think i would've liked it more if abbie's mother was at once mentally unstable AND tormented by real demons, because it opened up an interesting host of opportunities (dichotomy between jenny's and abbie's experiences of their mother, for example) - but then they swept it all under the rug tidily just because. iiiiiiiiidek.

but it was so pretty and had so much jenny, so. victories where we can!



tobm is a somehow awkward episode, but i think it touched on interesting things wrt zhaan, as in: that she's probably the most dangerously person on the crew, and that she had literally just sat in her cell and decided to meditate herself into holiness, and it's always an... interesting path that doesn't necessary mean that what you REACH in the end is holiness. it adds something for her character, for sure, but they've learned to do such things with defter touch as the show went on.


i'm not going to watch this movie because, eh, but out of interesting, was rdj doing something new there, or was it stark-ing it?

[cloudsinvenice]

I'm with both of you on that Sleepy Hollow ep - lots to love, but also lots of "if only".

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Yesssss, exactly. I agree with all your SH thoughts. The drugging in particular was just - what? Why is that happening? How is this a joke?

i think i would've liked it more if abbie's mother was at once mentally unstable AND tormented by real demons
I thought that was the case? I don't know, another problem with this episode was it was really unclear about its details. I couldn't always figure out what was happening or when. But Jenny! Hugs! Tears! So there's that.

it's always an... interesting path that doesn't necessary mean that what you REACH in the end is holiness
Yes, that is really interesting! It's a great set-up, and I'm want to see where they go with it. Even if this episode wasn't the best, it has so much possibility.

RDJ was fine, but his plot was pretty standard and boring. He's a fancy expensive lawyer with an unhappy marriage to a trophy wife, he comes back to Small Town Midwest (played in this movie by somewhere that was really obviously not Indiana, but whatever) and relearns the joys of small town life and then hooks up with his old high school girlfriend. He had some scenes with his daughter that were very cute! But not overall anything that new or worth watching.

[egelantier.livejournal.com]

well, they've tidily explained all the gory bits - she tried to murder-suicide jenny because demons, and she killed herself because a demon, and she was unstable because demons, and like... i think the message in the end was that everything she did was for the best and jenny should, like, get over this, like abbie did, and... okay. i guess. it was disappointing, i think.

i honestly don't know what's going on with this season. like, it always was an unashamedly silly show and i loved it for it, but they seemed to firmly know what's up with all the characters and how their character arcs map out (give or take katrina; poor katrina). and now it's all over the place, haphazardly (irving wasn't even suicidal! abbie didn't remember hawley's name two eps ago and now they're drugging people non-consensually together and winking! katrina's... let's not even), and, urgh. i hope they can wade their way out of it.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was confused by things like having the windows in her house papered over, and the chant "heads up, eyes open, trust no one" (or whatever the words were exactly) which seemed either disconnected from demons or an extreme overreaction... but, like I said, it was really unclear. I don't know what the creators' intentions were.

But yes, this season is proving to be really disappointing compared to last year's. I mean, I'm still watching, I just... I wish it could pull itself together. And yes, despite everything, Beharie and Greenwood are AMAZING! I adore them, and want to see everything they're in.

[egelantier.livejournal.com]

but damn, i'm so impressed with beharie and greenwood, i can't cope with it; i hope they have a really brilliant career ahead of them, maybe even a movie career. so much honest, understated, beautiful emotion, and wringing as much consistency as they can out of frankly disordered character arcs, and just. SO GOOD, SO GORGEOUS. i'm not quite at 'you should be evacuated from this show' point, because it's still my sleepy hollow, but i would LOVE to seem in something else.