Sunday, December 28, 2014

State of the Blog: Grimm Conclusions

You've probably noticed that over the last few weekends we've only been posting the Haven recaplyses. When we first started this blog we made first a tentative guideline, then (after some experimenting) a hard and fast rule that we would not hatewatch for the blog. And, honestly, we don't enjoy Grimm anymore. Many of the qualities we used to love about the characters are gone, new storylines keep forming as fast as old ones are dropped without consistency or conclusion, and you can go back and look at the recap for 4x03 which we flatly refused to deal with as it was blatantly fucking racist. That's become more typical of the show, and with all of those factors combined, it's not fun anymore. And if we're not having fun writing it, you're not going to have any fun reading it.

While there's always a slim possibility that'll change, we don't want to commit to anything: by the time the show finds its feet again (if it does), there's a significant chance it won't be a show we're interested in blogging anyway. We still adore the cast, and we'll be interested to see what else they do in the future - just not, sadly, on Grimm.

Archives and the show page will remain up and available for the foreseeable future.

Saturday, December 6, 2014

Choose Someone Else Haven S5E13 Chosen

Previously on Haven! Audrey is sick. Audrey is undergoing Spiderman-style clone decay, I forget the exact name for this, really you guys? Mara wants aether to fix Duke. Nobody believes her except maaaaybe Duke, and he really shouldn't. We get reminded of the existence of the open thinny in Manteo, which has apparently been nothing but a plot device to get us to Bad Decisions time at the end of the episode? I really hope they pick that up next season. Dave has Weird Shit and visions and Croatoan and no, none of that makes sense yet either. Even at the end of the ep. Cue showdown with Charlotte, who turns out to be one of the… whatever aliens/superhumans/whatever the fuck they are, from the other side where Mara and William came from. Why? Because she's Mara's mother! Well, she phrases it as Audrey's mother, but even for the heinous villain Charlotte turns out to be I can sort of forgive her eliding that when confronted by a woman with her daughter's face.


This week… okay I'm going to be upfront with you guys: for us, this was a giant fucking mess of an episode, the magic rules don't make SENSE, they break their own rules at every turn, and given that we've spent four seasons with every woman who isn't Audrey Parker and is on the show for any length of time getting completely fucked over by the narrative, this is… really kind of gross, by the time we get to the end. Apparently if you're not a self-sacrificing empathetic savior figure, you don't have worth as a woman on this show. I'd try and point at Gloria as the exception except she's raising her grandson in the twilight of her life and gave up a peaceful retirement to come back and be the coroner in the middle of the worst bout of Troubles; if that doesn't scream the Crone version of sacrifice and empathy I don't know what does. So if you don't want to read a lot of snarling punctuated by cheering for Dwight going NOPE YOU LIED IN A BIG WAY I'M OUT, GOT SHIT TO DO, I suggest you skip this recapaplypse.