Warehouse 13
Mar. 24th, 2011 03:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkitThis post brought to you by the fact that I went to bed early because I'm feeling terrible, then woke up at 2:00 am and haven't been able to get back to sleep.
So. I've started watching Warehouse 13 afterst_aurafina told me it had a bisexual character in it. And not word-of-god bisexual, nor implied bisexual, but really canonically acknowledged-onscreen bisexual. This is sufficiently rare in sff shows that it was inducement enough for me to give Warehouse 13 a try.
The bisexual character hasn't turned up yet (I've watched through 1x05), but OMG, there's been a reference to a historical character having a lover of the same sex! OMG, queer people EXIST IN THIS UNIVERSE. The capslock isn't particularly ironic; I'm genuinely excited about this, because so ridiculously, shamefully many sff shows/books are still set in the World Without Queers.1 Thank you for not doing that, Jane Espenson! (I give Espenson the credit because she has a history of at least trying to include LGB folks in her stories. She's the one who wrote Felix Gaeta as gay in Battlestar Galactica, and yes, it was only in the webisodes, and yes, she should have thought a bit more about what it would mean to present a character as gay (or possibly bi) and then promptly kill him off [Gaeta's death was already in the script--possibly already filmed--before the webisodes were made]. Nevertheless, she gets points for trying, and she's been trying as far back as Buffy the Vampire Slayer. *coughGiles/Ethancough*)
Warehouse 13 is very Sanctuary-ish--I can see why people want to cross them over, and the frequent mentions of Nikola Tesla on W13 also help. So far I like Sanctuary a lot better in some ways, through. Sanctuary has an ensemble cast of fascinating characters, whereas the only character I give a damn about on W13 is Artie--the two leads are cardboard cutouts with factory-issue Tragic Backstories, and unfortunately the actors who play them aren't giving them any extra personality. Artie, on the other hand, is wonderful and had better not be in any way killed.
W13 has more consistently good writing than Sanctuary (fewer info-dumps, yay!) and gets major props for including a lot of non-stereotyped characters of color. (Seriously, how often do you see a black academic on TV? Let alone a black professor of Italian Renaissance studies.) And yet Sanctuary, despite its clumsier writing and faily elements (no queer characters except for one word-of-god one, few characters of color overall [although having a woman of color in the main cast certainly counts for something]) grabs me, fannishly, in a way that Warehouse 13 so far doesn't. (And to be fair to Sanctuary, it's about ten times better at women characters than W13, so the fail is not all one one side.)
Some of it, I think, is that Sanctuary featured, from the start, an expanding world. It's constantly been bringing in new characters and quite often keeping them around; initially the focus was all on Helen and Will, but soon viewers got to know Ashley, Henry, the Big Guy, John, and Nikola, and they all got to have lives and feelings and agendas and importance. They were never just storytelling devices. And by this point, halfway through the third season, every recurring character in Sanctuary has a dense web of connections and history with other characters. Warehouse 13 seems, so far, to have the opposite trajectory. It's about isolation. The three main characters are in a warehouse in the middle of nowhere, their contact with others is deliberately restricted, and their job is to take stuff to the warehouse and lock it away forever. The agents may briefly get involved in other people's lives during their investigations, but then they leave again. While the Sanctuary network is enmeshed in the fabric of the larger world--everyone seems to know about it, for one thing--Warehouse 13 is secret. Those narrative choices put a big burden on the central characters, and two out of three of them aren't (yet, at least) developed enough to bear it. It's a fun enough show, but so far it hasn't managed to engage me emotionally.
1It's like the Buffyverse's world without shrimp, only a good deal worse.
So. I've started watching Warehouse 13 after
st_aurafina told me it had a bisexual character in it. And not word-of-god bisexual, nor implied bisexual, but really canonically acknowledged-onscreen bisexual. This is sufficiently rare in sff shows that it was inducement enough for me to give Warehouse 13 a try.The bisexual character hasn't turned up yet (I've watched through 1x05), but OMG, there's been a reference to a historical character having a lover of the same sex! OMG, queer people EXIST IN THIS UNIVERSE. The capslock isn't particularly ironic; I'm genuinely excited about this, because so ridiculously, shamefully many sff shows/books are still set in the World Without Queers.1 Thank you for not doing that, Jane Espenson! (I give Espenson the credit because she has a history of at least trying to include LGB folks in her stories. She's the one who wrote Felix Gaeta as gay in Battlestar Galactica, and yes, it was only in the webisodes, and yes, she should have thought a bit more about what it would mean to present a character as gay (or possibly bi) and then promptly kill him off [Gaeta's death was already in the script--possibly already filmed--before the webisodes were made]. Nevertheless, she gets points for trying, and she's been trying as far back as Buffy the Vampire Slayer. *coughGiles/Ethancough*)
Warehouse 13 is very Sanctuary-ish--I can see why people want to cross them over, and the frequent mentions of Nikola Tesla on W13 also help. So far I like Sanctuary a lot better in some ways, through. Sanctuary has an ensemble cast of fascinating characters, whereas the only character I give a damn about on W13 is Artie--the two leads are cardboard cutouts with factory-issue Tragic Backstories, and unfortunately the actors who play them aren't giving them any extra personality. Artie, on the other hand, is wonderful and had better not be in any way killed.
W13 has more consistently good writing than Sanctuary (fewer info-dumps, yay!) and gets major props for including a lot of non-stereotyped characters of color. (Seriously, how often do you see a black academic on TV? Let alone a black professor of Italian Renaissance studies.) And yet Sanctuary, despite its clumsier writing and faily elements (no queer characters except for one word-of-god one, few characters of color overall [although having a woman of color in the main cast certainly counts for something]) grabs me, fannishly, in a way that Warehouse 13 so far doesn't. (And to be fair to Sanctuary, it's about ten times better at women characters than W13, so the fail is not all one one side.)
Some of it, I think, is that Sanctuary featured, from the start, an expanding world. It's constantly been bringing in new characters and quite often keeping them around; initially the focus was all on Helen and Will, but soon viewers got to know Ashley, Henry, the Big Guy, John, and Nikola, and they all got to have lives and feelings and agendas and importance. They were never just storytelling devices. And by this point, halfway through the third season, every recurring character in Sanctuary has a dense web of connections and history with other characters. Warehouse 13 seems, so far, to have the opposite trajectory. It's about isolation. The three main characters are in a warehouse in the middle of nowhere, their contact with others is deliberately restricted, and their job is to take stuff to the warehouse and lock it away forever. The agents may briefly get involved in other people's lives during their investigations, but then they leave again. While the Sanctuary network is enmeshed in the fabric of the larger world--everyone seems to know about it, for one thing--Warehouse 13 is secret. Those narrative choices put a big burden on the central characters, and two out of three of them aren't (yet, at least) developed enough to bear it. It's a fun enough show, but so far it hasn't managed to engage me emotionally.
1It's like the Buffyverse's world without shrimp, only a good deal worse.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-24 07:05 pm (UTC)Doctor Who and Blake's 7 fan here! I can cope with cheesiness. Although the "Native American artifact" episode, which I watched last night after posting this, really tried my patience. Anyway, I wasn't expecting to meet the bisexual character right away; I went in assuming that queer inclusion is too "risky" until a show's relatively well established.
I see what you mean about Myka and Pete, and I like that too, but it bothers me that when the Pete (and sometimes Artie) tease/pick on Myka, it's in terms that are highly gendered. It's "there's stuff in your hair" or "you'd be so pretty if you smiled," or worst of all, "do you always eat when you're stressed?" The way Myka's depicted often veers into the "shrill controlling bitch who's forgotten how to be a woman" stereotype; it makes me respect the Sanctuary writers even more for not doing that. (Of course, it probably helps that Amanda Tapping has the power to put her foot down if Helen was ever written that way.)
I always assume romance plotlines will suck. *sigh* I wish Sanctuary had steered clear of them instead of bringing in Obviously Predestined Girlfriends for Henry and Will in S3.