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).
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timeasmymeasure
Re: 2x08, "Til Death"
Date: 2014-04-02 06:45 pm (UTC)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).