Shetland S7
Feb. 14th, 2023 02:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkitWell, that was pretty atrocious.
Jimmy freeing Lloyd is good. Jimmy leaving the police is good. (The ideal ending of all the remaining shows about good cops is for them to leave the police.) But it could have been handled so much better. First of all, it would have a more emotionally convincing and resonant choice in a context of Jimmy remembering that Duncan's in prison. Jimmy being troubled by that, because while Duncan did commit a crime, there's a big question whether it ought to be a crime and whether prison is an appropriate consequence. Various events of S6 and S7 opened up a space for thinking about when, if ever, prison is the right solution . . . and the show did nothing with it. Second, the show pretty much shifted all its criticism of policing onto the United States. Policing and the courts in the US are, of course, awful: racist, murderous, unaccountable. But the British system is very far from pure, and the show didn't touch on that at all.
Instead, we got a glorification of martyr cops. Jimmy the sin eater/Christ figure, taking on the burdens of the world. Jimmy the self-sacrificing hero. Don't get me wrong: I like Jimmy a lot, or I wouldn't have watched seven series of this show. But when a show's only critique of policing is that it's hard on cops . . . nah. And even that small and hardly unprecedented critique isn't sustained. We've watched Jimmy's job almost destroy him, and yet we're supposed to be happy that Tosh will be taking it over?
The ecoterrorism plot was just gross. I've never thought of Shetland as a right-wing show apart from the inevitable copaganda, but, ugh. All the more so coming after S6, where the progressive politician who was going to take on the oil and gas industry turns out to be a murderer.
Finally, there's the revoltingly sentimental celebration of Family infusing the ending. Only the heterosexual nuclear family, of course. The Cairnses in a big cuddle pile, vowing to pursue the path Connor would have wanted (which isn't even saving the planet, it's ensuring his graphic novel is read!). Tosh happily reunited with Donny and the baby, all troubles forgotten. And Jimmy and Meg, who, let's remember, barely know each other. They've been on a couple of dates and spent the night together, but here Jimmy is saying he's astonished at how much he feels for her. (So are we, Jimmy. So are we.) Here's cautious Meg saying that a world without Jimmy isn't worth living in.
I was prepared for a Jimmy/Meg endgame, and I could have accepted it if it had been handled better, more subtly. If we'd seen them saying, "Hey, let's try again and see how it goes," that would have made emotional sense. The big romantic declarations were utterly out of place in this story, between these characters. They're only understandable as a narrative commitment to the most tediously conventional version of Romance and Family.
Unconventional families need not apply, either. Even a family as mildly unconventional as Lloyd and Allison (interracial and partnered rather than legally married) gets destroyed in this story. Certainly there's no room for the more deeply unconventional family of Jimmy, Duncan, and Cassie (aka Ms. Barely Appearing In This Series--obviously she's a grown-up with her own life now, but it felt like the show mostly forgot that Jimmy even has a daughter). I can't help wondering whether the fact that she's Jimmy's stepdaughter makes a difference; Cassie's other living parent is Duncan, and so her tie to Jimmy has to be narratively minimized in order to make Meg 100% the center of Jimmy's new life. Two men coparenting is much too complicated for the story Shetland decided to be in S7.
I'm surprised, and sad, to see a show that has been capable of such good storytelling give us such tired, cowardly, uncreative dullness.
Jimmy freeing Lloyd is good. Jimmy leaving the police is good. (The ideal ending of all the remaining shows about good cops is for them to leave the police.) But it could have been handled so much better. First of all, it would have a more emotionally convincing and resonant choice in a context of Jimmy remembering that Duncan's in prison. Jimmy being troubled by that, because while Duncan did commit a crime, there's a big question whether it ought to be a crime and whether prison is an appropriate consequence. Various events of S6 and S7 opened up a space for thinking about when, if ever, prison is the right solution . . . and the show did nothing with it. Second, the show pretty much shifted all its criticism of policing onto the United States. Policing and the courts in the US are, of course, awful: racist, murderous, unaccountable. But the British system is very far from pure, and the show didn't touch on that at all.
Instead, we got a glorification of martyr cops. Jimmy the sin eater/Christ figure, taking on the burdens of the world. Jimmy the self-sacrificing hero. Don't get me wrong: I like Jimmy a lot, or I wouldn't have watched seven series of this show. But when a show's only critique of policing is that it's hard on cops . . . nah. And even that small and hardly unprecedented critique isn't sustained. We've watched Jimmy's job almost destroy him, and yet we're supposed to be happy that Tosh will be taking it over?
The ecoterrorism plot was just gross. I've never thought of Shetland as a right-wing show apart from the inevitable copaganda, but, ugh. All the more so coming after S6, where the progressive politician who was going to take on the oil and gas industry turns out to be a murderer.
Finally, there's the revoltingly sentimental celebration of Family infusing the ending. Only the heterosexual nuclear family, of course. The Cairnses in a big cuddle pile, vowing to pursue the path Connor would have wanted (which isn't even saving the planet, it's ensuring his graphic novel is read!). Tosh happily reunited with Donny and the baby, all troubles forgotten. And Jimmy and Meg, who, let's remember, barely know each other. They've been on a couple of dates and spent the night together, but here Jimmy is saying he's astonished at how much he feels for her. (So are we, Jimmy. So are we.) Here's cautious Meg saying that a world without Jimmy isn't worth living in.
I was prepared for a Jimmy/Meg endgame, and I could have accepted it if it had been handled better, more subtly. If we'd seen them saying, "Hey, let's try again and see how it goes," that would have made emotional sense. The big romantic declarations were utterly out of place in this story, between these characters. They're only understandable as a narrative commitment to the most tediously conventional version of Romance and Family.
Unconventional families need not apply, either. Even a family as mildly unconventional as Lloyd and Allison (interracial and partnered rather than legally married) gets destroyed in this story. Certainly there's no room for the more deeply unconventional family of Jimmy, Duncan, and Cassie (aka Ms. Barely Appearing In This Series--obviously she's a grown-up with her own life now, but it felt like the show mostly forgot that Jimmy even has a daughter). I can't help wondering whether the fact that she's Jimmy's stepdaughter makes a difference; Cassie's other living parent is Duncan, and so her tie to Jimmy has to be narratively minimized in order to make Meg 100% the center of Jimmy's new life. Two men coparenting is much too complicated for the story Shetland decided to be in S7.
I'm surprised, and sad, to see a show that has been capable of such good storytelling give us such tired, cowardly, uncreative dullness.
