Shetland through 7x02
Feb. 13th, 2023 06:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkitMy thoughts on the transition from S6 to S7 of Shetland can be summed up as: what a fucking cop-out.
S6 ended with everyone in trouble and emotionally shattered. Duncan and Jimmy faced a murder accusation and struggled to be the one to sacrifice himself for the other's sake, until Duncan finally snuck away and turned himself in. Jimmy, heartbroken, was nevertheless arrested too, and confronted with the decision to either lie to save his career or admit that he advised Duncan to try and cover up giving Donna an overdose. Jimmy was also deep in grief over his mother's death and his father's dementia, not to mention the practical problems of how to care for his father. And poor Tosh was unexpectedly, at least somewhat unwantedly pregnant.
I genuinely expected S7 to be about . . . all of that. To break away from the procedural format, or to introduce a new mystery in the context of Duncan's trial, Jimmy's investigation and/or trial, and everybody's personal sorrow.
Instead, we got a fucking time-skip. 18 months later, and Duncan's conveniently in prison and no longer an obstacle to Jimmy's heterosexuality. Jimmy's cleared of misconduct in 7x01, which means (since he did in fact try to help Duncan cover up what happened) he lied to the tribunal, but the narrative just glides right over that, along with the fact that Jimmy was actually arrested at the end of the last series. Jimmy's dad dies during the missing 18 months (even though people often live many years with dementia) so the show no longer has to include the emotional burden for Jimmy of caring for him, or the practical difficulties, plus the time elapsed means Jimmy's grief is no longer so huge that it prevents him (God forbid!) from dating Meg. Cassie has moved out to live with a boyfriend, so her presence isn't an obstacle either. And any struggles Tosh went through are never mentioned--she's got her adorable beloved baby, even though it was clear in S6 that she wanted to focus on her career and wasn't thinking of parenthood.
Literally everything interesting that happened in S6 was wiped clean. It's cheap and infuriating, especially considering the show has handled other emotional arcs much better.
To be clear, I wasn't really expecting Duncan/Jimmy to happen, though it would have been incredibly refreshing and honest if it had. But since the showrunners decided not to go there, they could have handled Jimmy's new relationship with Meg much better just by not sweeping everything else under the rug. By acknowledging that Duncan and Jimmy love each other, even if it's not sexual or romantic, and that any new relationship has to fit into the emotional context of . . . adulthood, of already having ties, of having a more complex emotional situation than just an empty hole waiting to be filled by romance.
And finally, I'm not loving the fact that the show's first gay male character in seven seasons is a pathetic middle-aged loser who's creepily infatuated with a young straight man barely out of his teens.
Way to go, show. Excellent writing all around.
S6 ended with everyone in trouble and emotionally shattered. Duncan and Jimmy faced a murder accusation and struggled to be the one to sacrifice himself for the other's sake, until Duncan finally snuck away and turned himself in. Jimmy, heartbroken, was nevertheless arrested too, and confronted with the decision to either lie to save his career or admit that he advised Duncan to try and cover up giving Donna an overdose. Jimmy was also deep in grief over his mother's death and his father's dementia, not to mention the practical problems of how to care for his father. And poor Tosh was unexpectedly, at least somewhat unwantedly pregnant.
I genuinely expected S7 to be about . . . all of that. To break away from the procedural format, or to introduce a new mystery in the context of Duncan's trial, Jimmy's investigation and/or trial, and everybody's personal sorrow.
Instead, we got a fucking time-skip. 18 months later, and Duncan's conveniently in prison and no longer an obstacle to Jimmy's heterosexuality. Jimmy's cleared of misconduct in 7x01, which means (since he did in fact try to help Duncan cover up what happened) he lied to the tribunal, but the narrative just glides right over that, along with the fact that Jimmy was actually arrested at the end of the last series. Jimmy's dad dies during the missing 18 months (even though people often live many years with dementia) so the show no longer has to include the emotional burden for Jimmy of caring for him, or the practical difficulties, plus the time elapsed means Jimmy's grief is no longer so huge that it prevents him (God forbid!) from dating Meg. Cassie has moved out to live with a boyfriend, so her presence isn't an obstacle either. And any struggles Tosh went through are never mentioned--she's got her adorable beloved baby, even though it was clear in S6 that she wanted to focus on her career and wasn't thinking of parenthood.
Literally everything interesting that happened in S6 was wiped clean. It's cheap and infuriating, especially considering the show has handled other emotional arcs much better.
To be clear, I wasn't really expecting Duncan/Jimmy to happen, though it would have been incredibly refreshing and honest if it had. But since the showrunners decided not to go there, they could have handled Jimmy's new relationship with Meg much better just by not sweeping everything else under the rug. By acknowledging that Duncan and Jimmy love each other, even if it's not sexual or romantic, and that any new relationship has to fit into the emotional context of . . . adulthood, of already having ties, of having a more complex emotional situation than just an empty hole waiting to be filled by romance.
And finally, I'm not loving the fact that the show's first gay male character in seven seasons is a pathetic middle-aged loser who's creepily infatuated with a young straight man barely out of his teens.
Way to go, show. Excellent writing all around.
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Date: 2023-02-13 03:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-02-14 01:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-02-14 04:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-02-14 05:53 pm (UTC)Once I've finished S7 (because I still hate spoilers even when I'm not loving the show) I'm going to check out whether there were behind the scenes changes. Because it feels like a different show than it did for the last several seasons. Not just the Jimmy and Duncan relationship, but Tosh. The storyline with her from a few seasons ago was handled so astonishingly well, and now it's just soap opera nonsense and piling on trauma.