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Nov. 27th, 2010 02:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
girlofpreySo. Nathan Wylde has left Emmerdale. I could have made this post and titled it 'Bye Bye Love, Bye Bye Happiness'. But I didn't. Because I'm very restrained.
To be honest, I didn't find it a very in character ending for him. I know that's possibly because I love Nathan and want to think the best of him, and the side we saw tonight was not the side of him I like best. But no, after all those months of struggling to help his mother, practically forcing himself into a mindset where he could help her, and being so tortured about it and so desperate, often, to tell Maisie and Will the truth, I genuinely thought we might see some of that desperation and fucked-upness tonight. That if he lied, it would clearly be out of desperation, rather than just lying to them. But no, we got smug bastard Nathan, acting like he had nothing to worry about with Declan and Ryan, when he clearly was scared of Ryan, then just wandering around to Maisie's and lying quite calmly about the whole thing, apparently not even thinking she might have heard it or might hear it from somewhere else by then. And being abused and slapped about by pretty much anyone who could get their hands on him. It's not like seeing Nathan humiliated hasn't always been part of the experience of watching Nathan, but I don't know. It's always seemed gratuitous, like saying to the viewers 'He Is Rich And Kind Of Immoral, Watch Him Get Tossed Around, Ha Ha', and tonight it seemed like more of the same. Except they had him kind of deserve it with what I thought was kind of OOC behaviour. Oh well.
But again, he wasn't really sorry for what he did to Ryan, so he was always probably going to have a comeuppance for that before he left. In my head, though, the only reason he wouldn't be sorry was because he did it to protect Natasha, and through that to protect Maisie and Will. And him being kind of a jerk about Maisie over the past few days and then lying right to her face tonight kind of undid that. It's not like he was all about pinning it on Ryan from the first moment he found out his dad was dead and it was his mum's fault - he wasn't even Nathan's first idea for someone to pin it on. And he really did seem willing to try to frame Faye when he and Natasha decided on that - he went sneaking around near her house when he knew she was out. But, for some quite practical reasons - which in some ways probably makes it worse - he decided to go for Ryan instead. The fact that he hated Ryan probably was a big part of him making that decision, but in some ways was incidental.
As for Ryan - idk. He seemed quite regretful about playing Maisie the recording last night, especially after her reaction that in some ways he'd just made things worse for her. But with him muttering on Wednesday, before it all happened, that Nathan was going to 'get what was coming to him' and his glee at torturing Nathan tonight, I don't really buy that. And he made the point that he was just learning 'the family art' of stitching people up. So at the moment I think he's pretty much as bad as Nathan, but not quite as lovely in his lovely moments, and without the excuse of being clearly a bit mad. So whatever. Also, I am not convinced about his plan for Nathan's money - I know Maisie and Will and Nathan all got some money in the will from their dad, but a lot of people seemed to think that wouldn't last any of them very long with the way they live. And now that all the money from the sale of Home Farm has gone into a trust fund for Will - won't he and Maisie basically not be able to touch it until he's 18? I don't know, it seems like it might not be the most helpful thing for them just at the moment. But hopefully the money will be safe for Will if the mess continues, I guess.
But I have been wondering, as I've said to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hestia8, if this really awful, really unsympathetic ending for Nathan might be a way of trying to preserve his issues, and the potential reaction to exactly why he helped his mum and what he's actually like, in case Lyndon Ogbourne ever returns, which he claims he's keen to do. And in that case him losing Maisie and her feeling the way she does now also makes sense, because Alice Coulthard doesn't ever seem to want to come back to the soap, so if he ever returns it'll have to be without her, and I can't seem him leaving her any other way, after what's happened to the rest of his family. And they've even sort of kept the door open for Will coming back, which I have wondered about if Nathan ever did return. I feel quite sorry for Will, really, because he obviously doesn't agree with anyone around him who's in charge of his life. What he said about Nathan, that he was upset with him for being a "liar" rather than anything worse - and him telling Belle that he's not going to London with Maisie and Nathan because "they've fallen out", rather than because of what Nathan had done. It really sounds like he's not as upset with Nathan as Maisie is, or that he doesn't hate him, at least. He's just going along with it because he agrees with Maisie more than Nathan, and she's sort of in charge of what's happening to him. But you could see that maybe in the future, if there was some discussion of Maisie having mental health problems again, or just if he wanted to come talk to Nathan, it wouldn't be impossible to have Will turn up again or end up in Nathan's custody. Assuming Nathan himself doesn't end up having mental health problems after all of this.
Things I did like: the scene of Nathan and Declan in the kitchen early on, where Declan was kind of a dick and really pointed out the part he played in Ryan taping Nathan's confession, and how Nathan was going to lose Will and Maisie and it was for their own good, he thought. And Nathan was genuinely a bit honest for a moment I thought, and not aggressive like you might expect, and said they were all he'd got. And Declan just kind of ignored that and said they were all he'd had. That vulnerability from Nathan was what I'd thought we'd be getting more of, given that Lyndon Ogbourne claimed that Nathan would be 'more vulnerable, more honest' than we'd ever seen him. But it was nice to see it for that moment. Then the bit with Will not seeming to hate him as much as Maisie did, not nearly as much. Then the fact that Nathan shared his big final scene with Declan - I'm sort of assuming that the writers intended it a 'Declan is Good and Effectual, see him deal with Bad Nathan'/'Declan officially taking charge of Home Farm' kind of thing, and possibly building up all that unfinished business between them, should Nathan ever come back to the soap. But I chose to glory in the bitter Nathan/Declan-ness of it all. And there's something kind of admirable about the fact that even after all Nathan had been through, he still managed to conjure up a filthy look and a sarcastic dropping of the keys when Declan continued to be a bit of a jerk. And that really quite stricken look on his face as he walked away. Oh Nathan.
I genuinely want him to come back in kind of Killing Mode. Just because I'm so furious that the writers never had anyone realise or even apparently wonder about just how messed up he is. Last year when he went away for two months after his mum told him his dad was dead, and then she tried to get him to help her, and he blackmailed her, and so on, I really really wanted him to come back having TRAINED AS A NINJA, to basically kill everyone who either had hurt, or looked set to hurt, him or his 'real' family, Maisie and Will, ever again. His mum, Faye, Ryan, Cain. Anyone who asked what had happened to his mum, Faye, Ryan or Cain. Anyone who asked what had happened to the people who asked about his mum, Faye, Ryan or Cain. Until basically there was just no-one left in the village, and he was just happily living up at Home Farm with Maisie and Will, and they were like 'didn't more people used to live around here?', and he'd be like 'yes, but they moved'. Genuinely I wanted that. And now I kind of want it again. Except maybe with less widespread murder. Ninja Nathan would be kind of awesome though. He'd finally have the upper hand physically with any of the various men who like to smack him around.
I want him to come back planning to get revenge on them all. I want him to come back having kind of gotten over it. I want him to come back having made it on his own as a successful businessman, because he has plenty of education in that area, his mum even seemed pretty impressed by his supposed skills, and he did work at Home Farm, not disastrously, for quite a long time. I couldn't believe Ryan being all smug about 'get a job', when he's had a job. Yeah, with his parents, but he wasn't rubbish at it as far as we know. He has actually been working. And then people could maybe stop apparently thinking he's had everything handed to him on a plate all his life, and just depends on his parents to look after him. I want Declan to be involved with a new business and find out it's Nathan running it, or that it's Nathan he has to deal with, and have a proposal he wants to go through, and have Nathan turn it down on genuine business grounds. And he thinks Nathan is just being a dick, but no, really there's quite a few holes in it that Nathan can see. I want him to come back having calmed down a bit. I want him to come back just as driven and crazy as ever, having properly pushed himself to climb any number of career ladders, and having aggressively taught himself French, Spanish, Italian, Mandarin, anything he thinks will give him an edge in the business world. Partly because I find the idea of Nathan being fluent in a foreign language INCREDIBLY HOT.
I want Declan to run into him later on down in London, maybe, actually selling himself on the streets, because he needs the money, and no-one is looking after him now, and who cares, really? This turned into quite an involved plotbunny, with Declan basically hanging out on the street corner, harassing him, and then buying a night with one of the rentboys or prostitutes that hang around near Nathan, not to sleep with them, but just to ask them about him and how he is nowadays. And then he keeps doing it because it clearly gets Nathan's back up, every few nights or so, until even the other prostitutes are like 'dude, Nathan, maybe you should just go with the crazy rich man who is really very interested in you. Although not yet, because we're all quite enjoying this'. Until one night when he goes to pick someone up, and Nathan's not there, and he's kind of worried, but he picks someone up anyway and goes to the Hilton - only to find Nathan outside, all like 'fancy meeting you here, yeah, I'm just waiting for the room to be sorted out'. And a man comes out, and comes over and escorts Nathan up to a room of their own. Because fuck it if he needs Declan to look after him and take him to fancy hotels. And Declan just stares after them both.
I want Declan to find out somehow that Nathan has actually tried to kill himself after everything that happened before he left, and he is genuinely quite shocked or mocking or something of Nathan doing something like that, and Nathan gets genuinely quite hysterical, either with rage or crazy laughter, and is just like 'what did you expect, Declan? What did you actually expect?'. I have horrible plotbunnies about Nathan ending up in a mental hospital after everything that happened to him, and because apparently he's not been hurt enough in canon, possibly experiencing sexual abuse in that mental hospital, and him just coming back or meeting up with someone from the show again and being just dead, just almost completely emotionally dead, because he's learned that you genuinely can't expect anyone in the world to be nice to you, ever. I want some sort of ridiculous, over-the-top scenario where he ends up being thrown into some situation with Maisie and Will (and maybe Declan, Ryan, Cain, etc) and doing something like taking a bullet for one of them, or pushing them out of the way of a car. Because really no, you can think what you like about how much he doesn't care about his family, but the fact is he really would probably give up everything for them. This one is slightly less canonical-seeming, after how he treated Maisie tonight or over the past few days - but given the fact that she tortured him, maybe he has a few issues with her of his own. I still think it seems kind of plausible though.
A part of me is horrified by the idea that Nathan might come back with a wife and a kid, because if he comes back as a better character it's like woo, heterosexuality fixes everything, and if he doesn't come back as a better character it's like one extra person for him to be kind of a dick to, probably. But a part of me is kind of ecstatic about it, because Nathan with a kid would probably be AMAZING and AWFUL. Just think how overprotective he'd be. But probably quite genuine and tender with the kid themselves. Maybe he could come back having got a woman pregnant, they decided to have the kid and see how it worked out, then after it was born the woman decided it just wasn't what she wanted, and he - who wasn't giving up that kid for any price - was left holding the baby.
I want him to come back a hundred thousand ways. But mostly as the half-awful, half-quite vulnerable character we got to know. Mostly I want him not have left. But if I can't have that, I want him to come back as quickly as possible. Or at least at some point. Please.
As if to make up for us losing Nathan Wylde, David Platt came back into Coronation Street yesterday, after a few weeks' absence. That was quite good. But watching Coronation Street lately also means you usually have to put with John Stape OH MY GOD I HATE HIM SO MUCH, and Owen Armstrong HE IS KIND OF PSYCHOTIC AND A DICK OH MY GOD. And Nick Tilsley, just being a dick. So it's still not entirely enjoyable. Hmph.
To be honest, I didn't find it a very in character ending for him. I know that's possibly because I love Nathan and want to think the best of him, and the side we saw tonight was not the side of him I like best. But no, after all those months of struggling to help his mother, practically forcing himself into a mindset where he could help her, and being so tortured about it and so desperate, often, to tell Maisie and Will the truth, I genuinely thought we might see some of that desperation and fucked-upness tonight. That if he lied, it would clearly be out of desperation, rather than just lying to them. But no, we got smug bastard Nathan, acting like he had nothing to worry about with Declan and Ryan, when he clearly was scared of Ryan, then just wandering around to Maisie's and lying quite calmly about the whole thing, apparently not even thinking she might have heard it or might hear it from somewhere else by then. And being abused and slapped about by pretty much anyone who could get their hands on him. It's not like seeing Nathan humiliated hasn't always been part of the experience of watching Nathan, but I don't know. It's always seemed gratuitous, like saying to the viewers 'He Is Rich And Kind Of Immoral, Watch Him Get Tossed Around, Ha Ha', and tonight it seemed like more of the same. Except they had him kind of deserve it with what I thought was kind of OOC behaviour. Oh well.
But again, he wasn't really sorry for what he did to Ryan, so he was always probably going to have a comeuppance for that before he left. In my head, though, the only reason he wouldn't be sorry was because he did it to protect Natasha, and through that to protect Maisie and Will. And him being kind of a jerk about Maisie over the past few days and then lying right to her face tonight kind of undid that. It's not like he was all about pinning it on Ryan from the first moment he found out his dad was dead and it was his mum's fault - he wasn't even Nathan's first idea for someone to pin it on. And he really did seem willing to try to frame Faye when he and Natasha decided on that - he went sneaking around near her house when he knew she was out. But, for some quite practical reasons - which in some ways probably makes it worse - he decided to go for Ryan instead. The fact that he hated Ryan probably was a big part of him making that decision, but in some ways was incidental.
As for Ryan - idk. He seemed quite regretful about playing Maisie the recording last night, especially after her reaction that in some ways he'd just made things worse for her. But with him muttering on Wednesday, before it all happened, that Nathan was going to 'get what was coming to him' and his glee at torturing Nathan tonight, I don't really buy that. And he made the point that he was just learning 'the family art' of stitching people up. So at the moment I think he's pretty much as bad as Nathan, but not quite as lovely in his lovely moments, and without the excuse of being clearly a bit mad. So whatever. Also, I am not convinced about his plan for Nathan's money - I know Maisie and Will and Nathan all got some money in the will from their dad, but a lot of people seemed to think that wouldn't last any of them very long with the way they live. And now that all the money from the sale of Home Farm has gone into a trust fund for Will - won't he and Maisie basically not be able to touch it until he's 18? I don't know, it seems like it might not be the most helpful thing for them just at the moment. But hopefully the money will be safe for Will if the mess continues, I guess.
But I have been wondering, as I've said to
hestia8, if this really awful, really unsympathetic ending for Nathan might be a way of trying to preserve his issues, and the potential reaction to exactly why he helped his mum and what he's actually like, in case Lyndon Ogbourne ever returns, which he claims he's keen to do. And in that case him losing Maisie and her feeling the way she does now also makes sense, because Alice Coulthard doesn't ever seem to want to come back to the soap, so if he ever returns it'll have to be without her, and I can't seem him leaving her any other way, after what's happened to the rest of his family. And they've even sort of kept the door open for Will coming back, which I have wondered about if Nathan ever did return. I feel quite sorry for Will, really, because he obviously doesn't agree with anyone around him who's in charge of his life. What he said about Nathan, that he was upset with him for being a "liar" rather than anything worse - and him telling Belle that he's not going to London with Maisie and Nathan because "they've fallen out", rather than because of what Nathan had done. It really sounds like he's not as upset with Nathan as Maisie is, or that he doesn't hate him, at least. He's just going along with it because he agrees with Maisie more than Nathan, and she's sort of in charge of what's happening to him. But you could see that maybe in the future, if there was some discussion of Maisie having mental health problems again, or just if he wanted to come talk to Nathan, it wouldn't be impossible to have Will turn up again or end up in Nathan's custody. Assuming Nathan himself doesn't end up having mental health problems after all of this.Things I did like: the scene of Nathan and Declan in the kitchen early on, where Declan was kind of a dick and really pointed out the part he played in Ryan taping Nathan's confession, and how Nathan was going to lose Will and Maisie and it was for their own good, he thought. And Nathan was genuinely a bit honest for a moment I thought, and not aggressive like you might expect, and said they were all he'd got. And Declan just kind of ignored that and said they were all he'd had. That vulnerability from Nathan was what I'd thought we'd be getting more of, given that Lyndon Ogbourne claimed that Nathan would be 'more vulnerable, more honest' than we'd ever seen him. But it was nice to see it for that moment. Then the bit with Will not seeming to hate him as much as Maisie did, not nearly as much. Then the fact that Nathan shared his big final scene with Declan - I'm sort of assuming that the writers intended it a 'Declan is Good and Effectual, see him deal with Bad Nathan'/'Declan officially taking charge of Home Farm' kind of thing, and possibly building up all that unfinished business between them, should Nathan ever come back to the soap. But I chose to glory in the bitter Nathan/Declan-ness of it all. And there's something kind of admirable about the fact that even after all Nathan had been through, he still managed to conjure up a filthy look and a sarcastic dropping of the keys when Declan continued to be a bit of a jerk. And that really quite stricken look on his face as he walked away. Oh Nathan.
I genuinely want him to come back in kind of Killing Mode. Just because I'm so furious that the writers never had anyone realise or even apparently wonder about just how messed up he is. Last year when he went away for two months after his mum told him his dad was dead, and then she tried to get him to help her, and he blackmailed her, and so on, I really really wanted him to come back having TRAINED AS A NINJA, to basically kill everyone who either had hurt, or looked set to hurt, him or his 'real' family, Maisie and Will, ever again. His mum, Faye, Ryan, Cain. Anyone who asked what had happened to his mum, Faye, Ryan or Cain. Anyone who asked what had happened to the people who asked about his mum, Faye, Ryan or Cain. Until basically there was just no-one left in the village, and he was just happily living up at Home Farm with Maisie and Will, and they were like 'didn't more people used to live around here?', and he'd be like 'yes, but they moved'. Genuinely I wanted that. And now I kind of want it again. Except maybe with less widespread murder. Ninja Nathan would be kind of awesome though. He'd finally have the upper hand physically with any of the various men who like to smack him around.
I want him to come back planning to get revenge on them all. I want him to come back having kind of gotten over it. I want him to come back having made it on his own as a successful businessman, because he has plenty of education in that area, his mum even seemed pretty impressed by his supposed skills, and he did work at Home Farm, not disastrously, for quite a long time. I couldn't believe Ryan being all smug about 'get a job', when he's had a job. Yeah, with his parents, but he wasn't rubbish at it as far as we know. He has actually been working. And then people could maybe stop apparently thinking he's had everything handed to him on a plate all his life, and just depends on his parents to look after him. I want Declan to be involved with a new business and find out it's Nathan running it, or that it's Nathan he has to deal with, and have a proposal he wants to go through, and have Nathan turn it down on genuine business grounds. And he thinks Nathan is just being a dick, but no, really there's quite a few holes in it that Nathan can see. I want him to come back having calmed down a bit. I want him to come back just as driven and crazy as ever, having properly pushed himself to climb any number of career ladders, and having aggressively taught himself French, Spanish, Italian, Mandarin, anything he thinks will give him an edge in the business world. Partly because I find the idea of Nathan being fluent in a foreign language INCREDIBLY HOT.
I want Declan to run into him later on down in London, maybe, actually selling himself on the streets, because he needs the money, and no-one is looking after him now, and who cares, really? This turned into quite an involved plotbunny, with Declan basically hanging out on the street corner, harassing him, and then buying a night with one of the rentboys or prostitutes that hang around near Nathan, not to sleep with them, but just to ask them about him and how he is nowadays. And then he keeps doing it because it clearly gets Nathan's back up, every few nights or so, until even the other prostitutes are like 'dude, Nathan, maybe you should just go with the crazy rich man who is really very interested in you. Although not yet, because we're all quite enjoying this'. Until one night when he goes to pick someone up, and Nathan's not there, and he's kind of worried, but he picks someone up anyway and goes to the Hilton - only to find Nathan outside, all like 'fancy meeting you here, yeah, I'm just waiting for the room to be sorted out'. And a man comes out, and comes over and escorts Nathan up to a room of their own. Because fuck it if he needs Declan to look after him and take him to fancy hotels. And Declan just stares after them both.
I want Declan to find out somehow that Nathan has actually tried to kill himself after everything that happened before he left, and he is genuinely quite shocked or mocking or something of Nathan doing something like that, and Nathan gets genuinely quite hysterical, either with rage or crazy laughter, and is just like 'what did you expect, Declan? What did you actually expect?'. I have horrible plotbunnies about Nathan ending up in a mental hospital after everything that happened to him, and because apparently he's not been hurt enough in canon, possibly experiencing sexual abuse in that mental hospital, and him just coming back or meeting up with someone from the show again and being just dead, just almost completely emotionally dead, because he's learned that you genuinely can't expect anyone in the world to be nice to you, ever. I want some sort of ridiculous, over-the-top scenario where he ends up being thrown into some situation with Maisie and Will (and maybe Declan, Ryan, Cain, etc) and doing something like taking a bullet for one of them, or pushing them out of the way of a car. Because really no, you can think what you like about how much he doesn't care about his family, but the fact is he really would probably give up everything for them. This one is slightly less canonical-seeming, after how he treated Maisie tonight or over the past few days - but given the fact that she tortured him, maybe he has a few issues with her of his own. I still think it seems kind of plausible though.
A part of me is horrified by the idea that Nathan might come back with a wife and a kid, because if he comes back as a better character it's like woo, heterosexuality fixes everything, and if he doesn't come back as a better character it's like one extra person for him to be kind of a dick to, probably. But a part of me is kind of ecstatic about it, because Nathan with a kid would probably be AMAZING and AWFUL. Just think how overprotective he'd be. But probably quite genuine and tender with the kid themselves. Maybe he could come back having got a woman pregnant, they decided to have the kid and see how it worked out, then after it was born the woman decided it just wasn't what she wanted, and he - who wasn't giving up that kid for any price - was left holding the baby.
I want him to come back a hundred thousand ways. But mostly as the half-awful, half-quite vulnerable character we got to know. Mostly I want him not have left. But if I can't have that, I want him to come back as quickly as possible. Or at least at some point. Please.
As if to make up for us losing Nathan Wylde, David Platt came back into Coronation Street yesterday, after a few weeks' absence. That was quite good. But watching Coronation Street lately also means you usually have to put with John Stape OH MY GOD I HATE HIM SO MUCH, and Owen Armstrong HE IS KIND OF PSYCHOTIC AND A DICK OH MY GOD. And Nick Tilsley, just being a dick. So it's still not entirely enjoyable. Hmph.
