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Comments
This is hard-hitting, intense drama. It is taken deadly seriously (in most cases; some episodes are a little iffy but this one definitely hit the mark), and the "villains" has the same access to clever tricks that the protagonists do, and the protagonists don't always win either. And what's really great is that the caselaw it cites is, from what I've heard, actually researched and genuine (even if some of the things the district attorneys do can sometimes be absurd), so you can see for yourself the rules and mechanics of the game, from the source of evidence to the key arguments used by both sides to affirm their contentions and sow doubt on the opposition.
spoilers for one of the episodes:
They actually didn't nail the boys on the strongest charges, but just on a charge of assault. Not everything goes right. Not to mention, one of their witnesses, a victim from the boys' hometown who was himself an illegal immigrant, was immediately arrested by US Customs (and then shortly thereafter, deported to Honduras while still in a coma) after giving his testimony. Also featured in this episode was a clearly political context, complete with a right-wing anti-immigrant TV personality (watched by a few jurors), a town with a recent rise in immigration (the school's principal openly mentioned having to stretch resources due to there being more students, to which a local car repair shop manager replies by complaining about where his tax dollars go), and heck, DA Jack McCoy himself was running for re-election and getting hammered bringing back the deported man on his office's dime in order make him available to the medical examiner and the defense's legal team.
Sure, it might be more things piled into one case than is typical, but it does clearly illustrate the amount of complexity that can go into a criminal trial and the quest to do justice, and that that trial does not exist in a vacuum either.
And of course, the results can be heartbreaking, to even multiple parties.
spoilers for another episode:
(said professor actually DID shoot said veteran, but then claimed it was self-defense)
in his legal defense, however, professor invoked a variety of arcane rules that ended up bringing in basically the entire chain of command during the bush administration, so the manhattan DA's office (i.e. jack mccoy) called his bluff and actually brought them all in (or at least their lawyers), who proceeded to serve about 50 lbs (of paper's worth) of legal motions, to which he responded by severing the trials, though this already got various people (from an old colleague now down in Washington DC to some state senator) to basically throw out the trial or even ask for his resignation
the jury reached a verdict, but just at the last moment, the craziest twist happened: a federal court took jurisdiction and nullified the trial
yes, we will never know whether the professor was found guilty.
While I may be a little biased in my analysis, this seems to follow the pattern I'd spelled out in past commentary, with regards to anime series that I enjoy:
1. I like to be able to "see" the mechanics of the setting laid out to me, so I can come to understand them allows me in turn to understand why the protagonists and antagonists do what they do. (Note: "see", not "be told". Obviously, discussing legal theory and caselaw is an exception, because it really is what real legal professionals do.) This includes knowing what things exist in the fictional setting, as well as how they work and relate to each other and how they influence the decisions that people make in that setting. In addition to this...
2. I'd like the operation of those mechanics to be used to tell a deeply emotional story. (And one that does not shy away from touching on controversies if they are relevant.) The emotion may be sadness or sympathy, or it may be joy or relief, or it may even be awe.
Everything is laid on the table by the story. And while only the facts of the matter and the rules of the game are used to decide outcomes, the emotions are very real, and often drive people to do things -- for better and worse. Sometimes that means making mistakes, but sometimes that means playing the game particularly well and creatively to accomplish a goal. But whatever it is, it's telling the story through the mechanics -- not infodumping, but rather, presenting a coherent fictional universe, including one where there may exist a greater world outside the events of the story, which may or may not influence its events.
And you don't need spectacle when the tension is so high already. Subtlety, cleverness, elegance. You don't need extra "sexiness" when the strategizing and the moving of the pieces to redirect the outcomes to one's favor ARE the "sexy" bits themselves.
Not everything I like follows this pattern, but this is one of the more common patterns.
Also, it seems like the more recent seasons of Law & Order replaced the "cold open" (side-characters unexpectedly discovering a body) with scenes showing something relevant to the story, often showing the victim's last moments -- which was a thing that had been done in Criminal Intent for a long time.
I don't actually like Criminal Intent as much as the normal Law & Order (or SVU), it always feels like everything is stacked in Goren's favor and the majority of the time it's super-hard to watch the villains break because they start seeming ridiculously sympathetic. There's also times where he'll just be investigating somebody and ruin their life anyways by exposing some secret even if they didn't do it.
I think I'm similar, because I'd rather have the details of the universe given to me practically so I can fill in the bits they don't give out in a logical way still.
I really do like this show, and there's been a lot of fun stuff that happened; from all the strangely bad things that happen to Laurel, to whoever is trying to force the Oliver/Diggle bromance.
I think when I've got this much free time again, I'll actually rewatch the first season too. The fourth season is my least favorite, but I think if I get hold of the Season 5 DVDs by [whenever] I'll definitely rewatch both as well.
I mean, I genuinely think Stef and Lena are great parents* but this is not the shining example of "Supermoms Save The Day" you would expect.
*oh by the way Lena's dad mortgaged his daughter's house on some terrible investments and they're about to lose it because obviously
I should mention that I did not love the middle of Season 3, but since then I've really started loving this show again. It's probably my favorite Western live action show this decade.
After episode 6: (Post was originally titled DNC #NoE, which I mention because I think it's clever and shouldn't go to waste.
So, Degrassi Next Class S4; it's hard to really talk about the show as a whole right now because episode 6 was insaaaaaaahn and I loved it. Esme convinced Zig and Frankie to sleep with her, after rumors about their friendship started swirling out of control. Maya went back to music, finally, and Yael, oh my gosh Yael.
Yael realized she was genderqueer thanks to Lola's help (I swear if it eventually comes out that Lola is some sort of Digital Fairy built into the Degrassi School System to deal with people's problems, I will not be surprised). They had a really heartfelt and like, actually not exploitative at all makeover scene, but Hunter still left Yael anyways.
I also realized that the Hollingsworth twins have serious issues in relation to others that kind of stem from the same thing. Hunter is always afraid that if he does something or Yael does something, she's going to leave him. He also acted out a lot in S2 when Miles was going to leave for boarding school. Frankie was severely depressed after Winston left her at the very start of the series, and then she spent the seasons where she was dating Jonah obsessing over every little detail and thinking he too would leave her. Thanks to Hunter, she even used a keylogger to get all of his passwords and log into all of his accounts.
Saad's also really grown into a great character this season. As much as I miss his insanely toxic friendship with Maya, he makes a lot of decently thought out political statements (as somebody who fled Syria, he doesn't understand why a terror attack in Belgium gets so much more attention than well, when his own house was bombed).
As for the less great bits; I wonder if Shay will ever become more of a character, because out of her original trio with Lola and Frankie, she's sort of just become "Tiny's girlfriend" and "Scholarship Needed". And I guess obviously it's not a few episodes without the fun appearance of Hunter's bits and the Geek Squad farting classical music.
Notes:
-Thanks to "lowkey" advertising Winston was finally allowed to have a real Macbook
-When Zigmund's college rejection letter comes in, it says "Dear Zig Novak" (instead of Zigmund), which I thought was funny
After episode 7:
The end of season four is apparently going to be full of hard hitting episodes.
So, Zig has been blocking out everything that's wrong with his life (failing to get into a university, his feelings concerning finding Maya during her suicide attempt) by allowing Esme to distract him. Too bad Esme's control and abandonment issues came to the boil in this episode. I know that this is somewhat a very Degrassi thing, reverting to "Meant to Be, OTP" couple-ism, and I'd much rather prefer Maya go back to hanging out with Saad, but Maya and Zig getting back together will probably be good for them, unlike Miles and Tristan or Shay and Tiny.
Esme's issues might be why she was able to become such great friends with Frankie (someone who also has abandonment issues), and I really felt sorry for her when her fake anaphylaxis moment is quickly dismissed as a hoax (couple that with Frankie appearing to lambast her about leaving her to wander lost and alone in the woods).
Also Shay slept with Tiny, that sure happened.
Maya, high on Esme's marijuana brownies:
[Singing] "The universe expands within my mind~ I am one with all womankind~"
[Crying]"I don't want to be high anymore!"
Spider-Man 2002 sure was something.
Not the new YA novel I'm reading, actually a description of the "villain" of Marvel's Inhumans.
I swear this show is so super tone-deaf; from the Super Powerful Woman Who Stands Up For Herself whose main purpose in-show is to parrot her husband's (the King's) words since he can't speak for himself to the "Asian guy is smart, Black guy is the life of the party in that generally annoying way and is also literally the only one who is part animal*" stereotyping, and this is just the main cast.
*okay there's also the iguana green Asian recurring character, if that helps.
Maybe this is why I prefer anime shows in fantasy settings. Don't have to deal with a cultural filter, and most characters are good-natured and nice unless they have some backstory explaining otherwise.
Anime is like... we all just quietly accept everybody is Japanese (usually) and move on.
I...don't, really? Unless I've sorta subconsciously merged bits of Japanese culture into what I consider "normal" because it's sufficiently similar to modern-day U.S. American culture to be essentially indistinguishable. Aside from presentational customs ranging from bowing at people to the use of honorifics to Shinto shrines atop hills to the kinds of pop music people enjoy, because I just gloss over those as superficial and "well it's set in Japan so of course they'd have these things, nothing unusual" -- they wouldn't be in real life but in stories that are largely speculative fiction, they end up being such.
That, or I tend toward watching spec-fic anime series rather than ones with realistic settings. I already know I'm on average less interested in, say, anime set in something that resembles modern-day Japanese schools, and on average more interested in ones that take place in their own fantasy settings.
It's like... bad, but not the worst thing.
By the way none of this is reality because anime is perfect.
None of that changes how in most of those cases the cast are conceived as ethnically homogenous and Japan isn't exactly progressive.
And fantasy settings in general (this might not even be culture-specific) have that "humans are white" (or replace "white" with some idea of "default") stereotype or just not give them distinct ethnicities.
It actually can be even worse in fantasy stories, where you get tropes even in western works like "elves are all snotty magical hippies" and "dwarves are hard-working, manly, and Norse-inspired" and "orcs are dumb muscle". No, at that point we should be calling them species, especially since they largely intrabreed, if not for humans being (1) clearly a generic template off which all other races are described simply by appending various traits and features and boondoggles, and (2) humans are horny enough to attempt to procreate with them anyway creating half-whatevers which are never named "half-humans" and then either they themselves never procreate or genealogical records are just horrible enough that fantasy settings never describe how many "pints of [race] blood" a person has. And maybe I should be thankful because unless that would be used as a means for social commentary, it'd be really hard to stomach.
So instead we just have generic humans, and other sentient fantasy
racesspecies that hopefully look non-human enough that humans won't try to sex themeven though enterprising fanfic authors will try that anyway.And yeah I'm aware that they're generally white. Not only that, but generic fantasy settings are typically based roughly on Medieval/Renaissance/Early Modern central/northern Europe with elements of southern Europe, with rolling hills partly covered in trees and small rustic idyllic towns dotting the landscape, and the occasional larger walled city and royal palace, low population density, and random ruins for fun and (sometimes literally) profit, while ruins are often Greco-Roman. And, to no one's surprise, the people are almost always white.
Despite Japan actually having some territories in the tropics, they don't seem to be commonly used as settings, except in beach episodes -- let alone actually setting a story in a place that resembles a fantasy version or jumble of real-life tropical areas, either with or without technology (or better yet, with magical technology). I guess there's just not much in the way of templates for it (or in the case of Japanese media, audience interest). Westerners also just stick with established templates, or combine them and often end up running such tropes as "Mayincatec" and "Spexico", while modern depictions are either "tropical paradise" or "banana republic", often with really superficial elements, like palm trees and steel drums and tiki huts. (Anime set in Latin-American countries or their fantasy equivalents is rare probably because it's just geographically distant from Japan.)
Similar thing about lack of templates seems to apply to high-latitude locales as well -- few stories about life in the tundra, say, with or without a fantasy reimagination of it. Off the top of my head one place that is always snowbound that I can think of is the city of Narshe in Final Fantasy VI.
I guess we would need to wait for someone like Tolkien to create a new fantasy lore template or other regions of the world, before other people can use/tweak the template for their own stories. Then, we might have more than just generic-light-skinned humans in Medieval European High Fantasy settings interacting with generic-light-skinned-humans in Feudal Japan or Modern Japan Urban Fantasy settings.
But that's basically irrelevant with live-action since you're not going to get poor exaggerations, so I'm not sure how the comparison factors here. This train of thought would maybe make some amount of sense in comparing drawn media with other drawn media, but that wasn't the comparison it started with.
Oh, oops, I forgot what this thread was. d'oh
Actually, few shows ever have the second guy introduced win the love triangle. Or the protagonist reabsorbing her evil clone (who wreaked havoc for 1.5 seasons) because without her she doesn't have a proper definition of which of her actions is 'wrong'.
Meanwhile Backstage right now is, to quote Scarlett, "Cirque du so Cray".
When Cassandra resorts to stealing Vanessa's choreography during an integral performance, and then finds herself on the outs with her boyfriend, she decides to turn a new leaf and transform the Primas into a group that intergrates the unofficial school dance crew that Vanessa choreographs for, The Streets, to form the Prima Crew.
Now, Carly, still holds the ideals and values of the original Prima creed to heart. It's important to note that whilst Cassandra is the current Dance Dictator, the group is an official Keaton tradition that probably dates back to before either of them were born, so she's somewhat justified in this.
She's now set out to return the Primas to their rightful glory, which I think is a brilliant little slice of plotting.
The scientist girl is played by Rossi's daughter from Criminal Minds, which isn't too much of a stretch since she's also in a government department (albeit a secret cryptid hunting one). The chief of their department is Lucy's father and head Writtenhouse guy from Timeless, which makes a weird amount of sense since the plot of Timeless is Writtenhouse finding a lab developing a time machine and infiltrating it.
The Disney Channel is going to have it's first gay major character on Andi Mack. I swear I didn't think I'd ever live to see this day.EDIT: I now honestly question whether this was an appropriate plot for this show at all, but I didn't want to edit this post to make it seem as if I'd never said it, so here we go.
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The plot of every episode of Dynasty.
Similarly, after a super-epic mid-season finale on How to Get Away With Murder, there'll be a Scandal crossover this year, which sounds like the appropriate levels of dumb and "LET'S DO IT".