oof

I'm partway through Taskmaster S12 now, and

under a cut, to spare the uninterested and unspoiled insofar as this kind of thing can be spoiled, is a reaction

I know it's a bit. But Alex saying to Greg "I love you. I want you to look at me the way I look at you," and Greg's utter indifference in response was painful to watch.

What makes these moments so compelling is that they're always played sincerely (even the ones that are much more bizarre than a declaration of love); it makes the funny ones really funny and the ones like this . . . ouch, ouch, ouch.

Then of course everything resets soon afterwards (though, unusually, Alex put in a callback to it with his little "I love you" during the final task) and is completely forgotten/"forgotten" by the next episode. This aspect of the show is mercifully like an old-school sitcom; an ongoing arc of that kind of thing might be too much for me. Even though I then invent the arc in my head.

Also, there's an excellent cast this series. Guz Khan is very funny, frequently endearing, and it makes me wish I had never seen his Twitter which, with its homophobia, sexism, and stanning for a repressive regime*, made it impossible for me to like him or wholeheartedly enjoy his work.

(*Qatar during the World Cup. The homophobia was at least as bad as you're imagining, and possible worse.)

and another thing I've noticed

More Taskmaster stuff, sorry. (Due to my back I'm home in bed even more than usual, and trying to distract myself from pain with bingeing.)

An observation on S10-S12 and early S13,

under the cut thing mostly for those who are tired of hearing about it.

It occurred to me during S12 that when the show introduced social distancing in S10, the way Greg behaves towards Alex got much nastier and more hostile. Of course there was always an element of that, but balanced by flirting and especially by touch. Once touch wasn't possible, no more balance. Sometimes Greg's cruelty to Alex was so pronounced that I found it upsetting, even knowing Alex probably wrote the lines.

Then with S13, social distancing ends. Practically the first thing Greg does is caress Alex, and they're flirting all the time. Greg calls Alex little pet names and is seldom mean.

Almost certainly, negative viewer reactions to the harsh tone played a big role in the change. But the timing is interesting; there's a whole mini-history of emotional responses to social distancing in there.

If you were wondering: yes, I'm still super excited for S2 of Our Flag Means Death. But I'm also nervous--open fiction canons always give me fear that the story's going to go badly wrong. So Taskmaster is a good place for my fannish brain to be.