#the problem Jason had for a while now is that writers constantly have him forgive and try to reason with a man (his father) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

travllingbunny · 5 years

Text

The 100 rewatch: 4x01 Echoes

Echoes? I see what they did there. The title may refer to echoes of the first nuclear apocalypse, of what happened in season 3, but also obviously refers to the return of the character of Echo.

This would mostly be a solid follow-up to the season 3 finale/introduction to new season, but everything to do with Echo brings it down. My problem with Echo is not that she’s a bad person (she is, but that’s not the issue), it’s that she’s a bad character, and nothing about her makes sense, starting with her supposed profession.

I also don’t enjoy the behavior some of the random Grounders, who are written to be stupid for plot reasons, as it often happens on this show. It’s the problem both with Grounders, and with ordinary people who are minor characters in general (random Arkers also tend to be stupid), and sometimes with major characters, too, because we need our protagonists, especially Clarke as the main character, to be constantly opposed and blamed for things, even though it often doesn’t make sense.

Right after Clarke pulled a plug on the City of Light and found out that everyone on Earth will die in about six months due to the new wave of radiation, we see the chaos in the streets of Polis – blood on the streets, crucified people who didn’t want to take the chip (Indra was one of them, fortunately she’s not badly hurt as it happened recently).

For once, Jaha actually feels guilty for the things he’s done, now that he’s free of ALIE’s brainwashing, which sets him up to be more sympathetic in season 4.

Why are the random nameless Grounders in Polis so stupid? They are now blaming everything on Sky people (again) – but while blaming Jaha would make perfect sense, for some reason they are blaming Clarke?! Is she supposed to be automatically responsible for anything any of Sky people do? Everyone remembers the things that happened while they were chipped, they know Clarke wasn’t chipped and fought against ALIE – oh yeah, and she defeated ALIE and freed everyone. There’s also a woman grieving her husband who apparently died when Flame!Lexa killed him in the City of Light, because who die in the City of Light also die in the real world, and the woman starts yelling “Wanheda” in an accusatory way. Because that’s also somehow Clarke’s fault now? Wow, the logic is astounding.

While the main antagonist of the season is a natural disaster, Echo as the new main human villain, unfortunately – because she immediately gets a character makeover into Ontari 2.0 – or the last thing the show needed. Because what better way to show what a Badass Chick/Strong Female Character ™ you are, if not yelling, waving a sword around and murdering an ambassador who opposes you?

We also find out now that Echo is not just a random Grounder who was only of note because she happened to be in the next cage to Bellamy in Mount Weather, and then used that connection to manipulate him and facilitate a mass murder of Sky people on behest of Queen Nia – she’s apparently a senior member of the Azgeda government, to the point that she announces that she’s taking the power while King Roan is incapacitated due to being severely wounded. According to Indra, Echo is a “member of the Royal Guard, spies”.

Wait, what?! How can they be Royal Guard and spies? Either she’s one or the other. A spy is supposed to be inconspicuous and able to blend in, collect intelligence, have a cover, manipulate people… so how can she be a spy if she is Royal Guard and everyone knows who she is? Maybe she and other RG members could also be doubling as something like state security, arresting people and torturing them for info, but spies? I guess she could be running a network of spies and just giving them orders while actual spies do the espionage… but there’s absolutely no indication of that, and there’s nothing about Echo that makes her look like a potential spy. Emori would make a better spy, because we know she can lie and manipulate people, present a convincing cover, use her charm to fool people – which she used as a common thief. Echo has no charm and no subtlety and doesn’t seem smart or sly enough to come up with elaborate schemes – she’s very in-your-face, loud, shoot (or rather wave your sword) first, ask questions later. And everyone apparently knows who she is. The whole “Echo is a spy” thing never made sense.

So in this episode, Echo threatens Clarke’s life, which makes Bellamy immediately run towards her and yell at her to let Clarke go; wants to kill all Sky people, and, since she doesn’t seem to understand that Abby is a better medical practitioner than the healer Azgeda have, won’t let her treat Roan, who is still unconscious and with a bullet inside his body. Clarke, who unlike Echo, can use her brain, has an idea that they should surrender, so they could get to Roan and heal him, hoping he will be more reasonable.

Bellamy gets the task of stalling Echo by presenting her their terms for surrender, and does his part by showing incredible self-control of listening to Echo talk total BS without snapping. She starts by actually telling him that he should be grateful that she saved his life by taking him out of Mount Weather (yes, she actually said that!). She says sorry she couldn’t tell him to take his girlfriend, so she wouldn’t die, but she invokes the Nuremberg defense: “I was following orders”. I guess she thinks Bellamy wouldn’t mind that mass murder or feel guilty over failing those people, if his girlfriend hadn’t died, because she doesn’t know him really and she assumes people generally don’t give a damn about human lives unless they’re someone really close to them. That’s the only time she showed only regret for blowing up a bunch of civilians in Mount Weather – and it’s not feeling sorry for what she did, but just because it hurt Bellamy and might have ruined the potential for a relationship with him. Little does she know she’s in a show where doing terrible things to a person only increases the probability of eventually starting a romantic relationship with them.

More bad writing! Echo says that Trikru can’t do anything now without an army. Wait, what? Are you kidding me? So those 300 warriors were the only ones Trikru had?.What?! And Lexa sent all of them to guard Arkadia? There was no one to guard Polis, fight Azgeda if necessary, fight any other possible dangers, there were reserves…? That makes no sense at all. Also, what were all the guards in Polis? Also, Lexa had previously sent an army of 300 to kill 80 teenagers and that army got burned… and then she had another army of 300 and nothing more? Jason Rothenberg (aside from being the showrunner, he is the credited writer of this episode) is really terrible at world building, and with everything to do with military strategy, how government and the military works, etc.

Echo is then like “You know why everyone hates Skaikru”. Why? Please tell. Killing Lexa’s army? Don’t you guys, Trikru and Azgeda, hate each other and had been at war before? Didn’t you blow up Mount Weather as a part of a scheme to destabilize the coalition and eventually assassinate Lexa and grab power from her, even when you were a part of the same coalition? Now you’re telling Bellamy you guys hate Skaikru for killing Trikru? LMAO If you suddenly feel Grounder solidarity because remembered you were all in the coalition – well, then you attacked Skaikru and killed a bunch of their civilians while you were a part of the coalition, so in that case, you hate them for taking your attack as an announcement they were at war with the Grounder coalition and acting accordingly? Pick a story and stick with it, geez.

Bellamy managed to stall her enough while Abby was taking out the bullet, but then when Echo finally realizes something is happening and cuts him off, realizing they’re stalling, and she throws him to the ground and puts a knife under his throat. Later she is just about to kill Clarke, when Roan wakes up. Since Roan isn’t an idiot, he just puts them in a cell, Clarke later manages to convince him that Praimfaya is coming and that they need to work together, and offers him the Flame to keep and have control over whoever the next Commander will be. Echo tries to convince Roan to kill Clarke and “take her power” as his mother had planned (do they actually believe in that superstition, or is it just because of the social importance of defeating a renowned enemy), but Roan has functioning brain cells, so he accepts Clarke’s suggestion instead.

So, after an episode full of amazing setup for their future relationship, such as threatening his life and trying to kill people he loves (as we’ve established that the worst the initial interactions are, the more likely a pairing is to get together), Echo is like “Do you think it’s possible for us to ever trust each other again?” Really? Bellamy is naturally unimpressed. I’m trying to imagine what it was like on the ring he is stuck with her for years in a small space with just 5 other people, and has to listen to her “apologies” for 3 years before caving in and forgiving her. Maybe I should be grateful I didn’t see it on-screen?

Better parts of the episode: everything that didn’t involve Echo.

Bellamy and Clarke are really at functioning as a unit and as co-leaders, and we see that in the way they discuss and come to the agreement how to deal with the situation. Bellamy suggests that they should keep quiet about Praimfaya, at least until Raven checks it out – because he understands how news would affect people, who had just been through something terrible and have just become able to feel pain again, so telling them they are probably all going to die in 6 months would have bad consequences. They end up telling a few people - Abby, Kane, Octavia, Indra (who was talking about an inevitable war between Azgeda and other clans – prompting Clarke to tell them about Praimfaya). Clarke clearly considers Bellamy her co-leader as she first looks at him to see if he agrees before she reveals the truth. This is similar, with role reversal, to their dynamic in season 1, when Bellamy was giving orders to the Delinquents but listening to Clarke and consulting her (which is why, for instance, Lincoln in 1x07 concluded Clarke was the leader). This time, Clarke is looked on as the leader (in the same informal way) and she consults with Bellamy the same way he did with her.

Abby and Kane have some shippy moments, and Clarke is looking at them with some envy and sadness, seeing others develop a happy new relationship.

During the scene where all of them are put in a cell together, Clarke cries and tells her mother that she loved Lexa, and Abby comforts her. From now on, we know that everyone knows about Lexa’s and Clarke’s relationship, rather than just suspect it or guess it. Note that Kane looks at Bellamy to see his reaction, and the camera pans to Bellamy for his (muted) reaction to this.

I find it interesting that, in their last conversation in this episode, Bellamy calls Clarke ‘Princess’ for the first time since season 1. Unlike what some fans think, I don’t think Bellamy ever used that nickname to flirt, like Finn did. He first used it with resentment, to point out at her privileged background, and then he started using it with respect – but “Princess” was a way to underline the distance between them. Since they got closer, he has always called her “Clarke”. Murphy decides that all the plans for alliance with Azgeda seems too crazy for him and changes his mind about sticking around, and leaves with Emori instead. First appearance of Gaia: when Roan announces to the crowd his decisions to accept Sky people as the 13th clan, and to keep the Flame, she seen in the crowd, protesting that it’s blasphemy for a king to act like a Flamekeeper. The latter is clearly a religious role.

In still mostly empty Arkadia, Harper and Monty are enjoying themselves, having a lot of great sex. Harper is unsure if their relationship is anything more but some temporary fun, but doesn’t want to be clingy so she does the “I understand if you don’t want to continue with this after everyone returns”, but Monty is direct and tells her that he would like to continue their relationship, to Harper’s relief and pleasant surprise.

Raven confirms that the radiation from the meltdown of the plants will indeed kill everyone in six months. Unlike Raven, who thinks that “nothing like a little pain reminds you that you’re alive”, Jasper is suicidal after being able to feel the pain again. He is listening to music on Maya’s player and has Maya’s favorite painting on his wall, and comes close to blowing up his brains, when he’s called by Monty, Harper and Raven. The other three are confused and shocked by the fact that he laughs at hearing the news of the upcoming end of the world. He feels free and this is where he decides on the “Seize the day” approach – if the world is dying, let’s have some fun and then die.

The closing scene is the first (and last) time we see something that happens in another part of the Earth, not North America: in Egypt, in the desert see a dead man, and a woman dies horrifically when a radiation wave hits. It’s a very gruesome image, and also a reveal that Raven’s and ALIE’s calculations weren’t right, and the death wave is coming much faster.

Timeline: The episode starts mere minutes after the end of season 3, and seems to takes place over the period of a few hours.

Body count:

We find out that several people died in the season 3 finale when Lexa killed them in the City of Light, which seems to follow the Matrix rules.

Rock Line ambassador is killed by Echo with a single sword stroke, because she stood up to her.

Two Azgeda guards and the Azgeda healer, killed by Octavia when she sneaked in as a part of the plan to allow Abby and the others could get inside and heal Roan.

Two scavengers in what used to be Egypt, killed by the death wave.

Rating: 6/10

#the 100 #the 100 rewatch #the 100 4x01 #the 100 season 4 #echoes #clarke griffin #bellamy blake #raven reyes #jasper jordan #thelonius jaha #roan kom azgeda #roan #indra #monty green #harper mcintyre

8 notes · View notes

theliterateape · 5 years

Text

The High-Maintenance Problem with The Atlantic’s Revisiting "When Harry Met Sally"

By David Himmel

If I had to choose my top five favorite romantic comedies without spending too much time thinking about them, they would be: 1. Annie Hall 2. Grosse Point Blank 3. When Harry Met Sally 4. High Fidelity 5. Better Off Dead

Now, having done that, I realize that I might have a thing for John Cusack. But this isn’t about that. This is about When Harry Met Sally, which was released on July 21, 1989. Being that it’s thirty years old, retrospectives of this adored movie were bound to come out. On July 19, The Atlantic published “The Quiet Cruelty of When Harry Met Sally” by Megan Garber. The subhead reads: “The classic rom-com invented the ‘high-maintenance’ woman. Thirty years later, its reductive diagnosis lives on.”

When Harry Met Sally struck a chord with us then and its affects linger with us now, which Garber did a wonderful job of pointing out in her piece. It is a well-written piece, structurally. But her thematic positioning is off the mark.

Her issue, made clear in the subhead, takes issue with the scene where Harry (Billy Crystal) tells Sally (Meg Ryan) that she is a high-maintenance women. The worst kind, at that. “You’re high-maintenance, but you think you’re low-maintenance,” he tells her.

Garber writes, “[T]he term today does precisely what it did 30 years ago, as backlash brewed against the women’s movement: It serves as an indictment of women who want. It neatly captures the absurdity of a culture that in one breath demands women do everything they can to ‘maintain’ themselves and, in the next, mocks them for making the effort. She wears makeup? High-maintenance. She shops? High-maintenance. She’d prefer the turkey burger? High-maintenance.”

But Harry doesn’t list Sally’s fashion sense or desire to shop or what item on the menu she wants as examples of her high-maintenance behavior. He uses one example of how she is particular with how she wants the item on the menu she’s chosen. Garber quickly over generalizes and assumes intention. She’s not alone. It’s what many have done with the phrase over the last thirty years.

Garber points the blame at Harry when she writes, “It’s so casual. It’s so bluntly efficient. The man, inventing the categories, and the woman, slotted into them. The man exempt; the woman, implicated.”

There’s a difference between being high-maintenance and being difficult. Sally is quite likable. Which is exactly why Harry befriends and falls in love with her.

To give credit to Harry’s glib assessment of Sally as “the worst kind” of high-maintenance creating yet another negative box with which to put women as feminist backlash at the hands of a male director and character is to give it too much credit. If we’re going to talk about Hollywood productions creating tiny boxes for women to exist, we must look directly at Sex and the City. The TV show, the films, as well as the source material and the author of the book and so many of the others penned by Candace Bushnell.

The four women weren’t shallow characters, but we the viewers did everything we could to drain the little depth they did have by posing and answering the question of Which Sex and the City Character Are You? (I’m such a Miranda, by the way.) It’s a terrible thing we do to women, but it’s not just female characters who are boxed in. The men of Sex and the City were stereotyped and shoved into shoddy bivouacs of categorization. Mr. Big, the rich dreamboat; Aidan Shaw, the nice guy who finished last; Jack Berger, the tortured, self-loathing writer; Aleksandr Petrovsky, the aloof foreigner who rejects American customs; Harry Goldenblatt, the safe Jewish lawyer who was too bald for Charlotte to even consider dating at first; Smith Jerrod, the young hunk who was perfect until he no longer needed Samantha to reaffirm his value. As a man living a single life hunting for companionship during the height of Sex and the City’s influence, I had to wade through these male stereotypes constantly. It sucked.

And I’m sure the same kind of wading sucks for women.

Simple, stupid character categories and stereotypes exist all over the place in popular media. How we invite them into our real lives and use them to govern our opinions and decisions is not the responsibility of the writer, actor, or director. It’s ours.

Garber writes, “But high-maintenance is one of a particular subgroup of pop-cultured insults that are applied, most commonly, to women — a category that whiffs of feminist backlash. There’s MILF, popularized by American Pie; and cougar, popularized by the 2001 book Cougar: A Guide for Older Women Dating Younger Men; and cool girl, introduced by Gone Girl; and gold digger, an insult of long standing recently revived by Kanye West. There’s butterface, derived over time from movies and music. There’s Monet (Cher in Clueless: ‘From far away it’s okay, but up close it’s a big ol’ mess’). There’s cankle — whose coinage added one more entry to the ever-expanding list of body parts women might feel insecure about — popularized by the allegedly romantic comedy Shallow Hal. (‘She’s got no ankles,’ Jason Alexander’s character, Mauricio, says. ‘It’s like the calf merged with the foot — cut out the middleman.’)”

Some of these are insults. Cankle is mean. Butterface isn’t all that nice. But calling someone a Monet is less an insult and more a dig at the unfortunate reality that some of us look better from far away thanks, in some part, to makeup. And yes, women and makeup is an issue steeped in sexism. But I could be a Monet, too. Maybe I am. Beauty and taste are in the eyes of the beholder.

My wife and I had a conversation early on in our dating days about women shaving their legs. She was all for letting her hair grow. I said that I had no problem with women who don’t shave their legs or their arm pits or whatever else. But I’m not sexually attracted to hairy legs. That’s just my preference. There are plenty out there who may find someone I consider a Monet to be the most gorgeous face on this planet. And that’s great. That’s how it should be. Different strokes and all that.

High-maintenance doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Owning a boat requires high-maintenance and I love owning a boat. Being a parent to a toddler requires high-maintenance and I love being a parent to a toddler. Flying a plane, driving a race car, being a professional athlete at the top of your game… all things that are high-maintenance. There are those who don’t want to deal with that sort of stuff, and that’s perfectly okay. Driving a Honda Civic while wearing a baseball hat because you didn’t style your hair is pretty low-maintenance. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

As it relates to Sally being high-maintenance, Garber misses the fact that there’s a difference between being high-maintenance and being difficult. Harry, while he does pin the term on Sally as a mark in the negative column, does not say she’s difficult. Because she’s not. She just wants it the way she wants it. She’s never rude to anyone when ordering a meal or whenever she’s being high-maintenance. And because of that, she’s not difficult or mean or snooty. Sally, for the most part, is quite likable. Which is exactly why Harry befriends and falls in love with her.

In the climax of the film, after Harry has stormed into the New Year’s Eve party and confronts Sally, he lists all of the high-maintenance things about her as top reasons he loves her so deeply. If that’s so, how can it be a negative thing? For all that I love about my wife and friends and family, I would never list the things I dislike about them as reasons I love them. Or would I? Perhaps that’s what makes human relationships so complicated. We love or hate the whole package. For good or ill.

Harry is a jerk. Well, it’s his veneer. Harry is a typical male who flairs his feathers and pounds his chest to present himself as an alpha male. When we meet him, his a smug college graduate — a kid. He’s sure of himself and his view of the world and no one can shake his confidence. Because he’s a twenty-something in his sexual prime, he’s going to over simplify the complexity of relationships because that’s what twenty-somethings do when they’re trying to get laid, which is what Harry is trying to do.

Later, after he’s been married and divorced, he’s a broken man. Even after he comes out of his mopey funk, he maintains his guard because he’s been hurt, hurt bad, and doesn’t ever want to feel that pain again. This is the Harry we have when he makes the high-maintenance accusation. Who among us hasn’t been cold and closed off and dumbed down human personality traits to the most simple state when trying to protect our wounded heart and ego? If you answered, “Me! I’ve never done that!” then you’re a liar or have never been hurt bad enough or are too careless with your feelings. But there I go… over-simplifying things and putting in a box.

When Harry Met Sally removed the honesty, the reality to make room for laughs.

Harry is only likeable because of his wit. He grows on us and we forgive his stupid comments because that’s what we do with people. When the good we see in people outweighs the dumb shit that comes out of their mouths, we forgive that dumb shit. We laugh at it. We find it charming. And thank Christ we do otherwise I wouldn’t have a single friend to my name.

But do not mistake that last statement as a defense of Harry. That conversation he and Sally have in their respective beds via split-screen is Harry at his most obnoxious in effort to deflect Sally from noticing his vulnerability. At that point in the film, he may well already be in love with her. Even so, I’m not defending Harry because there’s nothing to defend. It’s a pithy conversation between two friends. Yeah, it occurred in one of cinema’s most beloved films but so what? To take anything anyone says late at night during drowsy conversation over the phone as Rule is silly. Not every line of dialogue should carry equal amounts of weight.

Garber writes at the end of her article, “Movies’ magic can take many forms. Their words can become part of you, as can their flaws. Thirty years after When Harry Met Sally premiered, in this moment that is reassessing what it means for women to desire, it’s hard not to see a little bit of tragedy woven into comedy’s easy comforts.”

She’s spot on there. Tragedy and comedy go hand-in-hand in theatre, be it on the stage or the screen. According to the short documentary How Harry Met Sally, director Rob Reiner and writer Nora Ephron both planned on ending the film with Harry and Sally not pursuing a lasting romantic relationship, choosing to remain friends instead. But they caved to the Hollywood ending because, well, Hollywood. Though they both agreed that ending was far from realistic.

The impetus of the When Harry Met Sally story was based in reality. Reiner wanted to make a film where two people became friends but didn’t screw because it would ruin the friendship. Ephron liked it and signed on. She based the Harry character on Reiner’s experience as a man reentering the dating life following his divorce from Penny Marshall. Crystal, Reiner’s best friend at the time, punched up the screenplay to make Harry funnier. Because before Crystal got hold of him, Harry was an even greater misanthrope. Ephron based Sally’s character on her friends.

Reality, as representative as it is in art today and thirty (forty, fifty, sixty…) years ago, is not what movies are. And certainly not romantic comedies. Annie Hall may be the truest of all romantic comedies. But Annie Hall wasn’t meant to be a romantic comedy. It was originally intended to be a look at the man in a mid-life crisis. The end result is essentially one chapter of that larger idea. Allen even sacrificed some laughs in order to tell a story about human beings, according to a PBS documentary about the writer-director.

When Harry Met Sally is the opposite. It removed the honesty, the reality to make room for laughs. So to take anything from a movie that was positioned to pull laughs from a culture using characters that had been twisted out of real people and real feelings is both oversimplifying and over aggrandizing the point of a romantic comedy. It’s lazy thinking, really. And lazy thinking is the kind of thinking done by low-maintenance kind of people.

#When Harry Met Sally #The Atlantic #Megan Garber #Billy Crystal #Meg Ryan #Nora Ephron #Rob Reiner #Romantic comedies #Hollywood vs Real Life #Hollywood #Annie Hall #Penny Marshall #Sex and the City

0 notes