Series 9 Episode 8 discussion

[binkie]

(02-12-2010 04:21 PM)HellsBells Wrote:  I dislike the idea of a split personality because Spooks is not that sort of drama.

I know what you mean, HellsBells, and I don't look to an espionage drama to provide me with a medical narrative either (certainly not when it is done as badly as this was). However, Spooks has a pretty solid history in posing questions around what it is that MI5 officers are required to give up in service, and how hard they have to work to maintain a sense of personal and emotional identity that is separate from the identity of responsibility and duty they are required to assume in order to be successful in that service. If season 9 had been more rigorously scrutinised for internal logic and thematic coherence, it might in fact have made an excellent job of exposing and assessing the potential offered by the 'split personality' route. I could actually quite warm to the idea of the legend with a life of its own, oblivious to the origin of its creation, and the implications for the created-identity of being required to accept that it was a fiction. This would have allowed for some interesting confrontation with the idea that all the effort and compromise and sacrifice and suffering that went into the survival of Lucas in prison ultimately enabled the survival of John: someone to whose capture and detention Lucas would have been dedicated. If season 9 wanted a betrayal, how much more of a betrayal could they want?

One of the most obvious problems with the John-is-Lucas storyline, from the point of view of the writing, is the extent to which there appears to have been no executive decision taken as to a consistent portrayal of EITHER discrete and self-contained personae (Lucas and John) each of whom were ignorant of the existence of the other, and who shared neither conscious or unconscious interaction or influence, OR John as the conscious conveyor of the fiction of Lucas.

Equally, a further considerable problem with the Lucas-is-John storyline exists on a purely structural level as far as viewer investment is concerned. Partly because of the lack of clarity regarding the Lucas/John question of who-is-who-and-what-do-they-know?, season 9 seems to be asking us to identify with, sympathise with, and feel emotional attachment to the character of John, apparently simply because he looks like Lucas and uses the same name. Lucas going over the edge of the building because he realised he was a fiction - that he really was no one - represents, and requires, quite a different emotional response for the viewer than John going over the edge because he had been found out for a fantasist. The trauma of missed opportunities just keeps on coming!