Series 9 Rumours & Speculation

[binkie]

(06-11-2010 05:19 PM)femaleBertieWooster Wrote:  I have to disagree with the comments on Sarah and Maya.

Lucas always brings his part of the chemistry. The Sarah pairing had him looking like an idiot because she never brought her chemistry, except for a few scared looks toward the end of the season, not enough to figure out why he was so in love with her. Definitely bad acting because any of us put in the vicinity of RA for 20 seconds could bring the chemistry. (Anyone who disagrees, please raise your hand.)

Maya at least shows they have something going, even though she's had limited screen time (thank you writers.) There does need to be a great payoff as to the who-what-when-where and why of her.

Binkie, what do you mean by

Quote:Quite aside from the ??@*!! factor of using (and seemingly undermining) the carefully constructed and subtly shown character of Lucas to make a tired point about whether morality attaches to an action or to the person undertaking the action, there is also the irritation of it being done in such a binary way.

I suppose I am trying to highlight what seems to me to be the biggest failure in the execution of this storyline: that there are only two possible reasons for it looking the way it does. EITHER the writers have written the inconsistencies and logic gaps into the story, as functional inconsistencies and gaps in the story John has been told / remembers about himself; OR the writers have shown a blatant disregard for these inconsistencies and gaps becasue they could not be bothered to create a more robust Lucas-is-a-hidden-evil plot than the one they have. There doesn't appear to be a satisfyingly ambiguous option. Viewers are not being credited with enough intelligence to respond to a murky narrative, in which we are required to make our own decision about Lucas. EITHER we will receive some kind of flashback-tastic explanation for the frustrating plothole-fest of recent weeks; OR we will get no such thing, as though the plotholes have never existed.

I remember being pretty impressed with Tom's exit because, even though it had not been something the production had envisaged from the start, it was handled in such a way that viewers could appreciate that Tom had in fact probably been on an increasing spiral of disillusionment and regret since the end of episode 1.2. I have no objection to the revelation that Lucas is not what - or even who - we thought he was. That actually seems quite appropriate for the character in a tragic and inevitable sort of way. I do think it could have been better handled, though, by a show which has a good track record of double-edged dialogue and significance in retrospect. Picking out what was in the first place a fairly clunky line (Lucas saying to Sarah, in 8.5, that it must be a shock to discover someone you thought you knew is not as you had thought) and trying to make this the beginning of Lucas' confession of his own duplicity seems to me to be a cheap get out.

Blimey! I bet you were hoping for a shorter answer!!