POI 2x07 and 2x08

[kindkit]

A change in my work schedule means that I'll have to be at work at 6 am every day now. Except for the one day a week when I'll work 2-10 pm. Yeah, this is gonna be awesome.

So, have a very early POI discussion post for "Critical" and "Til Death." As always, anyone's welcome to join in, but please, no spoilers for developments after the episodes we're talking about.

Episode summaries under the cut, discussion in comments. (Note: my comments and probably most of the discussion will be on DW; I'm having connectivity problems and DW loads a lot better for me right now.)



2x07, "Critical"

This week's number is a surgeon, Maddy Enright, who will be performing heart surgery on the CEO of an energy company. Right before the surgery she gets a phone call telling her that her wife, who is in a local park hosting a charity art festival, will be shot unless she kills her patient by giving him a blood thinner and then "accidentally" nicking an artery.

Reese incapacitates one sniper, but learns from their leader, ex-MI6 agent Alistair Wesley, that there are more. Meanwhile, Finch is at the hospital keeping an eye on Maddie and researching the situation with the help of Leon Tao, whom they've let temporarily take refuge in the library because he got himself in trouble again.

Reese, with Fusco's help, manages to get Maddy's wife Amy safely away from the park, and Maddy calls off the operation even before she knows Amy is safe, but the actions of the surgical nurse, who was working for Wesley, mean that Maddy has to restart her patient's heart with Finch's help.

Meanwhile, Carter encounters ex-CIA agent Mark Snow, who reveals that "she," i.e. Kara is controlling him and is going to cause trouble. The episode ends with Carter confronting Reese about this, and Reese telling her she has to decide how much she really wants to know.


2x08, "Til Death"

This time they get the numbers of a married couple, Daniel and Sabrina Drake, who are joint CEOs of East Village Publishing. At first it seems like the threat comes from a militia leader about whom they published an exposé, but it soon becomes clear that in fact Daniel and Sabrina have each hired a hitman to kill each other,

With the help of Fusco (who was on a date), Reese and Carter foil the first murder attempts, then kidnap the couple and put them in a room together to try and force them to reveal whom they've hired. It turns out that their estrangement comes from lack of communication after Sabrina had a miscarriage, and soon they're talking again and cooperating to try to stop the hit men.

Reese takes them back to their apartment to serve as bait, and stops the killers with Fusco and Carter's help after a big shoot-out. The couple are arrested but won't testify against each other and will probably get off lightly.

Fusco's stakeout/date with Rhonda goes well and looks likely to turn into a romance. Meanwhile, Carter agrees to a date with a colleague, Beecher, who helped her on the case.

Throughout the episode there are flashbacks to Finch's early relationship with Grace, including his attempt to tell her the truth about himself, which he abandons after she implies that she doesn't need to know.

Comments

2x07, "Critical"

[kindkit]

1) Hey, it's queer characters with actual speaking roles! It was handled very well, in the sense that Maddy and Amy's marriage was shown just like any other marriage we see on the show, and nobody put scared quote around "wife." So that's good, though I'm sorry that it took one and a third seasons to get here.

2) Oh, God, Wesley's going to be another arc, isn't he? I feel a bit overwhelmed with arcs already. On the other hand, Julian Sands! Whom I haven't seen in anything for ages, but who has grown into a handsome if dissipated-looking middle age (perfect for playing a washed-up MI6 agent).

3) Reese came across as awfully scary and threatening towards Carter at the end. I'm not sure if the show intended that or if it's just Jim Caviezel's limited acting skills.

4) I like Leon Tao so I wasn't sorry to see him back. Though if he keeps turning up, I hope they give him a little more depth than "amoral opportunist."

5) The way Finch's hospital phobia was handled worked at first and then sort of didn't. "They make me aggressively uneasy," is a great phrase, and I liked how when it turned out that he had to stay at the hospital, he did his best to cope: "Even if I had a phobia, now would not be the time for it." And of course I loved Reese's gentle inquiry about whether he would be okay. But then came the surgical scene at the end, where I felt Finch's phobia was being played more for comedy. "Oh dear, look at it, it's squishy" is funny, but I've have rather have had an acknowledgement that Finch's associations with hospitals must be even worse than most people's

6) I assume the Hot Pockets were Reese's, because isn't it established that Finch hates junk food? He was certainly disdainful of Reese's can of pringle-like chips back in season 1.

Re: 2x07, "Critical"

[halotolerant]

1) YAY QUEER CHARACTERS! \o/ Really was *so* pleased by this. I really liked the way the queerness was incidental - like, the doctor and the spouse could have been any gender each and the plot would have run the same - this is exactly what I want to see more of in TV (well, queer main characters would be nice too, but I do like this just: 'meh, queerness happens, whatever' approach too)

Apparently some pressure group in the USA called 'A Million Moms' or something protested about this episode on the basis that it made queer people look normal... I... don't even....

2) I admit I felt a little bit like 'oh god, another recurring villain' but then I'm not that fond of the current recurring villains (apart from Root) and Wesley is much cooler (and hotter, ahem) than Elias or the HR crew.

3) He does really only have one voice register...

4) I liked Leon Tao more this time around. And he makes a good comic relief whilst having actual skills, which I like.

5) See, I think Finch's hospital phobia and a dislike of the 'squishy' would be two different things? I mean, I don't know, but I feel like his hospital phobia would be related to either his own time as a patient (pain, powerlessness) or visiting another he cared about (at some point in the not-yet-disclosed backstory). Patients and visitors don't tend to see much ick at hospitals. So I read his hospital phobia that way, and his 'ewwww, blood!' thing more as a self-deprecating sort of joke, although he also doesn't seem to like blood (not I think, because he's scared but because it's messy)

Re: 2x07, "Critical"

[kindkit]

1) Wow, the protest . . . I guess it's good for me to have the reminder that this is what US broadcast TV is up against as far as including queer characters. I get really frustrated that, as you mention, there are still no queer characters in the main cast of POI--and that's a legitimate frustration, and since some show has to be the first* to do it, it might as well be POI. But there really is homophobic backlash that happens.

Actually, I've been pretty surprised at how consistently left-of-center POI is in its political implications. To people outside the US this may be less obvious, because the "center" is the right wing in civilized countries. But it kind of amazes me to see a show that says torture is bad and cops can be corrupt and the CIA is out of control and queer people are just normal people. (I really wonder how Jim Caviezel ended up on this show, considering he's outspoken about being The Only Gay Right-Wing Christian In the Village Hollywood. Does he just not read the scripts except his own lines? Or maybe he just doesn't understand them . . . )

3) Wesley seems to have stepped out of a John Le Carré novel, which is fantastic. In fact he's very much my mental image of Bill Haydon.

5) It would make sense if they were separate things. I'm not sure the show meant them to be, but I like your interpretation better.

Re: 2x07, "Critical"

[halotolerant]

The 'someone has to be the first' thing is a hard truth. I think it's a lot the same with people (well, men really) being out as queer in sports. Right now, pretty much no one is and it's going to be a big deal when the first person really goes for it. But then at some point several people will be and no one will care as much any more (inasmuch as everyone is way over-invested in the private lives of sportspeople anyway, given that it is NOT RELEVANT TO THE SPORT [heh, personal source of irritation here])

The best example of 'queer character in main cast who is just there and has other traits besides queerness' that I can think of in any show broadcasting presently is Game of Thrones, who took and expanded what is more of a subplot in the book rather well. OK, GoT has a main cast that's much larger than average, which is arguably a bit dilutional, but still worth mentioning.

Re: 2x07, "Critical"

[kindkit]

I meant to add a footnote to "first," because it's a very limited kind of first: network sitcoms and prime time soaps have had queer characters in the main cast, and so did "Buffy," a prime time genre show but one that probably had a female-skewing audience. So POI would only be first in the sense of "a prime time network drama in a 'male' genre that probably has a male-skewing audience." The gender of the characters concerned also matters, I think. Networks are more likely to lose male viewers--the most valued demographic--if they include queer men than queer women.

Interestingly, British TV is a lot better than US TV at including secondary and one-off characters who are queer, but not so much better under the POI conditions: main cast in a genre not identified as "for women" or specifically aimed at queer people.

I think I'd heard there was a queer man in GoT; alas it's not enough to make me want to watch. (The conditions under which GoT is made are different from those of POI, becaause GoT if I remember right is an HBO show, and HBO gets its revenue from subscribers who pay for access to all the show rather than advertisers who pay to put their ads on a particular show. It means HBO can be a lot "edgier" with its content without worrying about losing money.)

Re: 2x07, "Critical"

[halotolerant]

I like how they keep stretching what the number can refer to - here it's a person who 'will' hurt someone themselves (either the patient or her wife, by not hurting the patient) but who is a victim too. It's a very good concept to build a show on, the more I think about it.

2x08, "Til Death"

[kindkit]

1) I have such mixed feelings about this episode. It was funny sometimes and I enjoyed the lighter tone, but at other points it was grossly sentimental. Ten minutes' honest conversation can save a marriage that has deteriorated to the point that the couple are trying to kill each other! Yeah, right.

2) It almost felt like they were trying to cram as much heterosexuality into this episode as possible (to make up for last week's lesbian couple?). Having said that, I like Fusco and Rhonda's chemistry, and although we don't know much about Beecher yet, he seems nice enough.

3) As for the flashbacks, well, at least Grace finally gets a personality. Alas, the personality she gets is unbearable. I am trying, honestly trying, to be fair to Grace and the Grace/Harold pairing, because I don't like het but I don't want to be a jerk about it. But . . . I just don't see Harold falling in love with someone who speaks in self-help platitudes. "Every day there's a new lesson," really? And "Our journey starts here. Any mystery around the corner, we can discover together"??? Even if it was a male/male relationship and I was more innately inclined to like it, I would be rolling my eyes at lines like that.

4) I think Grace has to be put in the category of manic pixie dream girl, the free spirit whose only role in life, or at least in the story, is to teach an uptight man how to love and be happy. At least Grace is a mild version, more of a soppy pixie dream girl, but still, the show hasn't done anything to make her interesting beyond a generic sweetness we're supposed to read as lovability. Her two-dimensionality shows most clearly in her conversation with Harold about Italy: she says Italy is beautiful and dreamlike, Harold says "I first saw the Italian countryside through a ViewMaster." His line has specificity and implies a lot about his personality; hers is vague and tells us nothing except that she's kind of a drip. She reminds me of one of the women Bertie Wooster keeps not marrying, the one who calls the stars "God's daisy chain." I'm honestly dreading seeing any more of this pairing, and I have a bad feeling there's going to be more.

5) The birthday scavenger hunt (because the manic pixie dream girl always inspires her formerly staid man to do whimsical things) at least confirms my theory that Finch tends to give elaborate, over-the-top gifts. Okay, he didn't quite buy Reese a painting and then lie about it (and why is he lying so systematically to Grace?) but I can see a resemblance.

6) As my consolation prize, there was some Nathan! And interestingly the scene was set up so at first we'd think Finch was on a dinner date with Grace. Parallels, yes. Though I do think S2 is downplaying their friendship a lot, because now Harold's past and his feelings are required to be all about Grace. His and Nathan's conversation is solely the women in their lives. I also note that this scene contradicts something in S1, where Nathan doesn't know Finch is seeing someone, and says "If you had anyone in your life, you'd tell me about it."

7) In the present, Finch is still stalking Grace. I fear that the show is setting things up for them to meet again, which, beyond how much I don't want it, also undermines the basic premise of the show that Finch and Reese have to stay unknown and unconnected to the rest of the world as much as possible. And given that Finch letting Grace think he's dead is supposed to be a noble self-sacrifice to protect her, because if she knows about the machine she'll be in danger, shouldn't he, oh, stay away? Rather than lurking in the park across the street, semi-concealed behind things and apparently completely unrecognizable because he's got new glasses?

Re: 2x08, "Til Death"

[halotolerant]

My feelings were not mixed. I hated this. A lot. Wanting to kill your loved one? Is not OK. Is a million miles from OK. Is a serious creepy thing that happens to people and is horrible and not kind of wacky and cute, which the episode writer seemed to think it was... *takes deep breath* I didn't care about the couple much even at the beginning, and, yeah, the slathering on of het relationships in every direction throughout, that didn't work much for me either, because why did *all* the cast suddenly get dates?

I think the writer thought the Grace/Harold stuff was cute and lovely, because based on the central couple, this writer doesn't see realtionships the way I do, but what really struck me was how much of the Grace/Harold interaction was sort of... just meaningless? Italy's beautiful and art is nice and it's fun to have people buy you ice-cream - none of that is what makes a relationship profound or meaningful. If I'm going to buy in to Grace/Harold, I want something more solid that ties them together. Like risking their lives for each other, or giving up something for each other. It's weird that in a show that generally excels at strong, interesting, varied female characters, Grace is none of those things.

It makes me feel, in many ways, like Haorld is fascinated by the fact that he can be with Grace as much as he is with Grace. When he's with Grace, he can play the role of the lovely, fairly cliche boyfriend. He can flirt (because she's not going to just discount him for not being Brad Pitt), he can do date talk, he can indulge his need to protect and give things. And he can be watching himself *winning* at this social art and smiling internally, amazed that he can actually have 'normal' life if he ever wanted. And OK, maybe he doesn't want her precisely, but he's not not having this because he *couldn't*, that's the point... /ramble

So yeah, mostly I'm going to forget this episode happened...

Re: 2x08, "Til Death"

[kindkit]

I went through the episode deliberately not thinking about the spousal murder issue, because I was enjoying the caper-comedy bits and I know that if I thought too much about what was actually happening, I wouldn't like it. But, yeah, it's not really a good subject for breezy comedy.

It's weird that in a show that generally excels at strong, interesting, varied female characters, Grace is none of those things.

And this episode was written by a woman, too. My sense is that the show can give us great women character so long as they're not one of the guys' romantic interests. But it can't manage to give us love interests that are more than just love interests. We're seen rather more of Jessica than of Grace, but what do we actually know about her personality? Nothing. She was there to love Reese and then be victimized and then be killed.

If I'm going to buy in to Grace/Harold, I want something more solid that ties them together. Like risking their lives for each other, or giving up something for each other.

Even more than that, I want to see what they see in each other. Then if after that there's life-risking or self-sacrifice, awesome, but I want a basis in some sense of compatibility. With Harold and Grace, I kept thinking "What do they talk about?" and I couldn't think of anything. Partly that's because we know Harold is a lying liar who lies for reasons we don't yet know about, but it's also Grace's underdeveloped personality and the lack of a sense that they have anything real in common. I just can't see Grace, as written, holding a sensible conversation about anything (she supposedly loves Dickens, but that's definitely something we're told; if the best she can say about Italy is that it's beautiful, I don't get the sense that she reads much), and Harold has a real streak of intellectual snobbery. And what does she see in him? Again, what do they talk about? I think you're probably right that Harold deliberately enacts a "perfect boyfriend" persona, and I can see how Grace or anyone might find that pleasant, but I'd think there would have to be a hollowness to it: Harold is withholding almost every aspect of his real self, and what we know of his real self doesn't seem like someone who would be genuinely compatible with Grace.

Haorld is fascinated by the fact that he can be with Grace

*nods* Thinking about it from his point of view, the relationship makes most sense to me as his experiment in normality. He meets this sweet-natured woman, not very bright, not with a high self-esteem ("I'm just an illustrator"), who's self-effacing and kind in a very undemanding way (see: low self-esteem), and she accepts him and is flattered by his attention, impressed by his intelligence, etc. Of course he's going to be flattered by that--he's lonely and insecure, feels alienated by most people, and wants to feel that he could be normal and have the things other people have. I'm sure he thinks he's making her happy--possibly he is making her happy--but it's all facade and surface, no depth. His heart isn't in it, though I'm willing to believe that he convinced himself, sometimes, that he loved her (and also had a lot of nagging doubts).

Re: 2x08, "Til Death"

[halotolerant]

Yeah, definitely the way I take Harold with Grace is that he enjoys the fact that he can achieve 'being the awesome het boyfriend who does feelings and things'. I think he *likes* her, for sure, he likes that she's relatively straightforward and not conniving and neither about to be murdered or to murder someone - in the world he's got involved in, it must be nice to have someone who can just spend hours discussing random things with him. I think, following the breakup, he probably feels guilt about having lead her on, exacerbated by the fact that he was lying so much all the time. I think one reason he might stalk her so much is to try and convince himself she's fine and he didn't do too much damage, rather than wanting to see her per se.

And then he thinks, well maybe this is what love is like, this nice simple fondness. This is what normal people get to feel, this low key, low stress sense of 'actually, I could stand to share a house with this person' and a vague confidence that they'd help with cooking and be quite fun vacation companions.

But on the other hand, he's heard that love is harsh and crazy and painful, and he's seen evidence of that, and what he's felt for Nathan and what he's learnt to feel for Reese? That isn't nice or simple or gentle. It's wracking and complicated and involves a lot of feeling dreadful and then spikes of feeling just *amazing*, just better than he thought anyone could feel without pharmaceuticals.

And he doesn't like it, or get why human beings have to be so messy and contradictory. And he still longs a little for Grace, with whom he could be perfectly in control of himself.

Re: 2x08, "Til Death"

[kindkit]

If Harold is confused about his sexuality, or uncomfortable with it (and this doesn't require reading him as exclusively gay), he might also enjoy the feeling of "normality" in another sense. He's certainly old enough to have absorbed the idea that queerness is a sign of maladjustment and immaturity, and while I'm sure he'd reject that intellectually, he could still feel it.

Tying this in to what you've said, he could feel that the nice calm affection and sense of stability/control he feels with Grace are the rewards of heterosexuality: real grown-up normal heterosexual love doesn't hurt, it isn't extreme, it's calm and decorous. Obviously this is preferable to the abnormal love he felt for Nathan and is scared of feeling for Reese, with its humiliating, overwhelming emotions and its dreadful feeling of vulnerability.