Series 9 Episode 8 discussion

[binkie]

(08-01-2011 03:49 PM)NightOwl Wrote:  But if the writers didn't want the audience to feel sympathy for Lucas what was the point of the flashbacks in this episode? I think they're meant to indicate that Lucas has slipped into insanity and to serve as a mitigating factor for his behavior. Sort of a "Lucas has kidnapped and plans to kill Ruth, he's betraying his country, he's willing to give the Chinese a weapon to use in committing genocide, but he's not really to blame because he's not in control of himself." And the rooftop scene, too, is used to create sympathy for him what with his inability to kill Harry and his "I'm nothing." line.

The writers seem to want to have it both ways. They want us to be horrified by John Bateman, but still love Lucas. They want him to be a hero, a villain, and a victim but they don't give us any reasons for his choices so I, for one, am left not knowing what to make of any of it other than the writers made a big mismash of what could have been a great story.

There are so many problems with the rendition of the Lucas-is-John storyline it's difficult to know where to start (and when to stop).

I think it's important to emphasise that the main difficulty is not with the fact of the Lucas-is-John conceit in itself - although, there are problems arising from it in the poverty of thought that informs the sustenance of it as a function in the narrative - so much as it is with the way in which this development is (mis)understood within the narrative itself. The decision to present Lucas-is-John in such a way as to allow for speculation that there would be a resolution which retained the validity of Lucas' identity, only to reinforce the conclusion that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar (and a psycho killer will always default to type) was an interesting and unusual one, especially for a show which relies on the assumption of hidden significance and double bluff. However, the thing falls down in the telling, and the structure of the telling.

As you suggest, NightOwl, the writers of season 9 want – and, presumably, expect – certain characteristics of viewer reaction in relation to the Lucas-is-John storyline. Where some viewers struggle to react in anticipated ways, though, is largely a result of the storyline failing to earn the desired reaction. This failure is almost entirely the product of insufficient structural investment in the narrative.

If we follow the logic of the storyline, the flashbacks are not to Lucas’ experience, they are to John’s relationship with an experience he disguised as something else. The question of sympathy for Lucas is irrelevant. Lucas doesn’t exist. John, at this point in the story, is just Darwin’s dog. I’m sure the show wanted more than this. I’m sure the show believes it has delivered more than this. I’m sure the show is under the impression that it has initiated discussion about moral responsibility and identity and self-awareness and culpability. The reason we are having a discussion about a “mish-mash of what could have been a great story”, rather than a discussion about any of these other things, is because we do not know how Lucas/John works. The writers never bothered to tell us. Is Lucas a performance given consciously by John? Is Lucas a discrete, spontaneously arising, persona, operating independently of John with no knowledge of him and no means of communicating with him? Is Lucas a forgotten survival mechanism, created and controlled by John as a means of keeping himself invisible? Season 9 seems to want elements of all these possibilities at once, and that is just lazy, inefficient and – as this continuing discussion illustrates – ineffective storytelling.