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Aug. 1st, 2011 11:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
girlofpreyYesterday I woke up to pretty massive period pains, and despite getting up pretty late (3-ish), I ended up going to lie down again for a while because curling up on the couch made stomach feel like it was stabbing me, and standing up made me feel hot and like I was going to throw up. Which I did not want to do, having just taken a painkiller.
But eventually I felt much better, and last night I was rewarded with Inspector George Gently, Sugartown, and new Dragon's Den. Inspector George Gently was supposed to be about the hippie movement in England in the 60s, and Gently and Bacchus finding themselves in the middle of a social and sexual revolution. I had high hopes for the episode, and it did not disappoint. I don't really understand the lack of fandom for George Gently. One of them's a Professional, and I've heard loads of people talk about how much they love Lee Ingleby. But anyway. Whatever. The episode also featured someone who is currently in Hollyoaks, which was quite pleasant as well. Hurrah.
They didn't really explain who the new person was on Dragon's Den. Only after rewatching it a couple of times did I hear that she got rich through the haulage industry. She has weird hair and weird make-up and weird clothes/shoulder pads. But sometimes she was really lovely, and sometimes she got really angry, and she has quite a lovely gravelly voice. So I quite like her. Also I LOVE DEBORAH MEADEN. That is all.
Today turned out to not be a very much better day. Our dog is quite old now and a bit less in control of himself than he used to be, and after spending a while downstairs having a sandwich and whatever, I went to go out and found that he'd pooed all over the garage. Including one bit right between a pair of my trainers, though not on them, so I guess I was lucky in a way. Then I went out to the shop, and I had some music in, and there were about three or four young women walking the opposite way to me across the street with their kids, and I heard one of them shouting, and I turned round to look, and she was shouting at one of her kids. Pretty nastily really. But I was obviously looking for a moment too long, because she noticed me, and started shouting something about how she was shouting at her kids, did I have something I wanted to say about it? I still had my music in, so I couldn't really hear her, so I just looked away and kept walking, and that was that really. But it wasn't very pleasant. Then I went home, messed about in my bedroom for a while, my dad came home and cleared up the garage (I would have liked to clear it up for him in some ways, but I really just wasn't touching that), and then later on was watching TV, and the dog started squeaking again, so I went to let him out, and found that in the garage once again our cat had left a dead animal for us. Except not so much the outside of that animal. My dad ended up clearing up that one too. Poor dad.
But after and in between all of that, I did get the usual Monday/Friday night soap marathon. Hollyoaks, Emmerdale, Coronation Street, Eastenders, Coronation Street. Phew.
Hollyoaks was quite good, plenty of Ste/Brendan, but I might well have enjoyed it more if I hadn't, just before watching it, read a Ste/Brendan fic that I thought was just a fic, but I eventually realised was the events of the episode from Ste's point of view, which the writer had obviously seen on E4 on Friday. And didn't warn for spoilers for it, or anything. It was still good though.
One of the things I really like about Emmerdale is the way they do imperfect motherhood, and don't necessarily make it a bad thing or a failure, just a thing that happens sometimes. There've been quite a lot of women - usually Dingles - who had kids, and didn't hate them, wanted them taken care of, just didn't think (sometimes correctly) that they could take very good care of them, either at the time or ever, really. Chas and Aaron are a pretty good example of this, and I love Chas and I really love Chas and Aaron's relationship, because she clearly really cares about him and loves him, she just wasn't very good at being there for him when he was growing up, and now she's not very good at listening to him and a little bit overprotective. But my problem with it was that lately at least, the show seemed to be treating it like it was a terrible thing, and really favouring Aaron and Paddy's relationship over Chas and Aaron's. And Paddy and Aaron's relationship was lovely you know, but I always found Paddy a bit weird, and I thought he was a bit weird to Chas about it all. When Chas was properly trying her best, you know.
So I'm quite glad that now Chas has properly said to Paddy, look he's my kid, I'll look out for him, you've got your own family to concentrate on now, so just focus on them. He'll always be around if Aaron or Chas needs him, you know? I do quite like that.
As for the Jackson disability suicide storyline, I don't know what to say about that. I do kind of feel like Ashley (possibly? I haven't been watching much of it, really) and Aaron are right at the moment. It was really soon after his accident, there's plenty of other people who are in that situation who still live their lives, and maybe he was just depressed and needed help to get through it. If he'd had help, and time, and talked to a professional, and still felt like that then, yeah, he has the right to die if he wants to. But so soon afterwards, I feel like it was too soon to make a decision like that. Not that I think it wasn't a hard decision and that Hazel, Jackson and Aaron didn't all have the best of intentions and really did do what they thought was right. But I think it was probably too soon. Although from what I hear, that's how the show is trying to play the storyline, so maybe I'm just assuming that from what I've heard. But I just keep thinking that it was only a year or two before that Aaron tried to kill himself, because there was something about himself that he couldn't change that he thought meant he'd never be able to have a good or normal life. And people stopped him from doing that, and no-one thinks they shouldn't have because he wanted to do it. I keep waiting for them to bring that up, but they haven't, or at least not yet.
As for the Leyla and Jacob storyline, I don't know either. I'm sure Alicia loves Jacob, and she brought him up and everything, but I also think it was a shitty thing for Leyla to have been emotionally blackmailed into having a baby she didn't want, forced to go through the bonding process (clearly, from how she's feeling) of pregnancy and labour, and then having her baby taken off her by her sister, and then for that sister to most of the time, act like it was nothing. And I don't really like Alicia. She just seems shouty to me, like they just wrote her in to fight with people. She does have her sympathetic moments, and like I say, I'm sure it'd be really awful for her to lose Jacob. But I kind of feel like I want Leyla to end up with him. But then again, it's not so much about how they feel as about how Jacob feels, and chances are he's going to choose the mum who's raised him all his life, Alicia. Which is really sad for Leyla. Dude.
Phew. And now Coronation Street. And frankly, Kylie is another character for me who I don't really like and just seems a bit shouty, like Alicia, above. She does have her sympathetic moments, and I do feel sorry for her, but they don't seem to tie into her character in a larger way. Like tonight, I heard what was going to happen and I was annoyed at her, but then I heard about her breakdown with Gail and how she really wanted Max, she just didn't think she'd be any good for him, and I felt sorry for her. And the scenes were really sad, with all the stuff with her mum as well. But the fact is still that, unless she did want him when she told David she did and just had a change of heart later, that Max was happy and settled with Becky, and looking to stay that way, and Kylie ruined that and got him taken back into care without any apparent intention of getting him back with her, seemingly just to keep David sweet. I don't know, maybe she was intending to get Max back at the time and then changed her mind. But there's nothing about that in the script, and I've not seen anything that would imply that in her character since it's happened, so how I am supposed to imagine that she did? And I find the other interpretation pretty awful behaviour, no matter how sad her story was.
And she's just so horrible to Becky about it, for no reason. I know she's a bit scrappy, but Kylie has really given Becky no reason to think she cares about either Becky or Max, given her behaviour and what she was like when she was living with Becky and Steve and Max. So naturally Becky's going to be angry about the whole thing. And Kylie just wants to wind her up even more. And I don't understand it, except possibly that the Coronation Street writers want to use everything around Becky to make her life as hard as possible. And David, oh my god. He's always been pretty controlling and All About Family, and in it's own fucked-up way it's sort of sweet. But jesus. "I can't think of any reason a kid shouldn't be with it's natural mum"? How about physical abuse, or sexual abuse, or neglect, David? Those are some pretty good reasons. God.
But anyway. Some good things about Coronation Street:
Yay.
And then there was Eastenders. The Michael/Anthony corruption storyline isn't being as brilliant as I'd hoped, but there's still a little bit every episode where Anthony will specifically say something either acknowledging Michael or trying to get Michael to agree with him, and Michael largely ignores him, but sometimes he'll stick up for Anthony or look over when something Anthony has done has gone right, and smile a little bit. So I'm still watching it. I get the feeling that it might become a bigger thing later on, when the storyline progresses a bit. I have to say though, Michael isn't doing too great at manipulative incest at the moment, but he is doing pretty well at being a nutcase. Honestly. He's like the Joker. He's not as good as the Joker. But you get the idea. For a soap. It's all little twitches and funny smiles. He's very good at it. Kind of a jerk, a lot of the time, but pretty good at it all the same.
Also, I found myself slightly shipping Masood/Yusuf. Now that Yusuf is all canonically acting a bit creepy, and their tension has become slightly less about being weird around Zainab, and more about shooting each other heated looks across tables and making catty remarks at each other. I'm not interested in them, but like I say, I like it better them just hating each other than being weird with Zainab. So hurrah. I guess.
And now it's really hot, so I'm going to go change, possibly.
But eventually I felt much better, and last night I was rewarded with Inspector George Gently, Sugartown, and new Dragon's Den. Inspector George Gently was supposed to be about the hippie movement in England in the 60s, and Gently and Bacchus finding themselves in the middle of a social and sexual revolution. I had high hopes for the episode, and it did not disappoint. I don't really understand the lack of fandom for George Gently. One of them's a Professional, and I've heard loads of people talk about how much they love Lee Ingleby. But anyway. Whatever. The episode also featured someone who is currently in Hollyoaks, which was quite pleasant as well. Hurrah.
They didn't really explain who the new person was on Dragon's Den. Only after rewatching it a couple of times did I hear that she got rich through the haulage industry. She has weird hair and weird make-up and weird clothes/shoulder pads. But sometimes she was really lovely, and sometimes she got really angry, and she has quite a lovely gravelly voice. So I quite like her. Also I LOVE DEBORAH MEADEN. That is all.
Today turned out to not be a very much better day. Our dog is quite old now and a bit less in control of himself than he used to be, and after spending a while downstairs having a sandwich and whatever, I went to go out and found that he'd pooed all over the garage. Including one bit right between a pair of my trainers, though not on them, so I guess I was lucky in a way. Then I went out to the shop, and I had some music in, and there were about three or four young women walking the opposite way to me across the street with their kids, and I heard one of them shouting, and I turned round to look, and she was shouting at one of her kids. Pretty nastily really. But I was obviously looking for a moment too long, because she noticed me, and started shouting something about how she was shouting at her kids, did I have something I wanted to say about it? I still had my music in, so I couldn't really hear her, so I just looked away and kept walking, and that was that really. But it wasn't very pleasant. Then I went home, messed about in my bedroom for a while, my dad came home and cleared up the garage (I would have liked to clear it up for him in some ways, but I really just wasn't touching that), and then later on was watching TV, and the dog started squeaking again, so I went to let him out, and found that in the garage once again our cat had left a dead animal for us. Except not so much the outside of that animal. My dad ended up clearing up that one too. Poor dad.
But after and in between all of that, I did get the usual Monday/Friday night soap marathon. Hollyoaks, Emmerdale, Coronation Street, Eastenders, Coronation Street. Phew.
Hollyoaks was quite good, plenty of Ste/Brendan, but I might well have enjoyed it more if I hadn't, just before watching it, read a Ste/Brendan fic that I thought was just a fic, but I eventually realised was the events of the episode from Ste's point of view, which the writer had obviously seen on E4 on Friday. And didn't warn for spoilers for it, or anything. It was still good though.
One of the things I really like about Emmerdale is the way they do imperfect motherhood, and don't necessarily make it a bad thing or a failure, just a thing that happens sometimes. There've been quite a lot of women - usually Dingles - who had kids, and didn't hate them, wanted them taken care of, just didn't think (sometimes correctly) that they could take very good care of them, either at the time or ever, really. Chas and Aaron are a pretty good example of this, and I love Chas and I really love Chas and Aaron's relationship, because she clearly really cares about him and loves him, she just wasn't very good at being there for him when he was growing up, and now she's not very good at listening to him and a little bit overprotective. But my problem with it was that lately at least, the show seemed to be treating it like it was a terrible thing, and really favouring Aaron and Paddy's relationship over Chas and Aaron's. And Paddy and Aaron's relationship was lovely you know, but I always found Paddy a bit weird, and I thought he was a bit weird to Chas about it all. When Chas was properly trying her best, you know.
So I'm quite glad that now Chas has properly said to Paddy, look he's my kid, I'll look out for him, you've got your own family to concentrate on now, so just focus on them. He'll always be around if Aaron or Chas needs him, you know? I do quite like that.
As for the Jackson disability suicide storyline, I don't know what to say about that. I do kind of feel like Ashley (possibly? I haven't been watching much of it, really) and Aaron are right at the moment. It was really soon after his accident, there's plenty of other people who are in that situation who still live their lives, and maybe he was just depressed and needed help to get through it. If he'd had help, and time, and talked to a professional, and still felt like that then, yeah, he has the right to die if he wants to. But so soon afterwards, I feel like it was too soon to make a decision like that. Not that I think it wasn't a hard decision and that Hazel, Jackson and Aaron didn't all have the best of intentions and really did do what they thought was right. But I think it was probably too soon. Although from what I hear, that's how the show is trying to play the storyline, so maybe I'm just assuming that from what I've heard. But I just keep thinking that it was only a year or two before that Aaron tried to kill himself, because there was something about himself that he couldn't change that he thought meant he'd never be able to have a good or normal life. And people stopped him from doing that, and no-one thinks they shouldn't have because he wanted to do it. I keep waiting for them to bring that up, but they haven't, or at least not yet.
As for the Leyla and Jacob storyline, I don't know either. I'm sure Alicia loves Jacob, and she brought him up and everything, but I also think it was a shitty thing for Leyla to have been emotionally blackmailed into having a baby she didn't want, forced to go through the bonding process (clearly, from how she's feeling) of pregnancy and labour, and then having her baby taken off her by her sister, and then for that sister to most of the time, act like it was nothing. And I don't really like Alicia. She just seems shouty to me, like they just wrote her in to fight with people. She does have her sympathetic moments, and like I say, I'm sure it'd be really awful for her to lose Jacob. But I kind of feel like I want Leyla to end up with him. But then again, it's not so much about how they feel as about how Jacob feels, and chances are he's going to choose the mum who's raised him all his life, Alicia. Which is really sad for Leyla. Dude.
Phew. And now Coronation Street. And frankly, Kylie is another character for me who I don't really like and just seems a bit shouty, like Alicia, above. She does have her sympathetic moments, and I do feel sorry for her, but they don't seem to tie into her character in a larger way. Like tonight, I heard what was going to happen and I was annoyed at her, but then I heard about her breakdown with Gail and how she really wanted Max, she just didn't think she'd be any good for him, and I felt sorry for her. And the scenes were really sad, with all the stuff with her mum as well. But the fact is still that, unless she did want him when she told David she did and just had a change of heart later, that Max was happy and settled with Becky, and looking to stay that way, and Kylie ruined that and got him taken back into care without any apparent intention of getting him back with her, seemingly just to keep David sweet. I don't know, maybe she was intending to get Max back at the time and then changed her mind. But there's nothing about that in the script, and I've not seen anything that would imply that in her character since it's happened, so how I am supposed to imagine that she did? And I find the other interpretation pretty awful behaviour, no matter how sad her story was.
And she's just so horrible to Becky about it, for no reason. I know she's a bit scrappy, but Kylie has really given Becky no reason to think she cares about either Becky or Max, given her behaviour and what she was like when she was living with Becky and Steve and Max. So naturally Becky's going to be angry about the whole thing. And Kylie just wants to wind her up even more. And I don't understand it, except possibly that the Coronation Street writers want to use everything around Becky to make her life as hard as possible. And David, oh my god. He's always been pretty controlling and All About Family, and in it's own fucked-up way it's sort of sweet. But jesus. "I can't think of any reason a kid shouldn't be with it's natural mum"? How about physical abuse, or sexual abuse, or neglect, David? Those are some pretty good reasons. God.
But anyway. Some good things about Coronation Street:
- Becky-David scene! A not-just-shouting, vaguely reasonable, but still quite home-truthy Becky-David scene. It was SO GOOD. And then later he sort of vaguely didn't insult her and stuck up for her to his mum. Even though he then said he couldn't stand her. It was kind of lovely all the same though.
- A David/Nick scene. With smiling, and teasing each other, and touching David, and David describing himself and Nick as "thrusting businessmen". That was also good.
- Maria! I love Maria. Talking about necking wine, and helping another lady on the street with her sofa. I was properly expecting her to be all "I'll call Chris", I was really pleasantly suprised when two ladies got to do reasonable physical work, on TV and everything. Also Maria is amazing. Hurrah.
- Audrey telling Gail off. Oh I love Audrey. I love her loads.
Yay.
And then there was Eastenders. The Michael/Anthony corruption storyline isn't being as brilliant as I'd hoped, but there's still a little bit every episode where Anthony will specifically say something either acknowledging Michael or trying to get Michael to agree with him, and Michael largely ignores him, but sometimes he'll stick up for Anthony or look over when something Anthony has done has gone right, and smile a little bit. So I'm still watching it. I get the feeling that it might become a bigger thing later on, when the storyline progresses a bit. I have to say though, Michael isn't doing too great at manipulative incest at the moment, but he is doing pretty well at being a nutcase. Honestly. He's like the Joker. He's not as good as the Joker. But you get the idea. For a soap. It's all little twitches and funny smiles. He's very good at it. Kind of a jerk, a lot of the time, but pretty good at it all the same.
Also, I found myself slightly shipping Masood/Yusuf. Now that Yusuf is all canonically acting a bit creepy, and their tension has become slightly less about being weird around Zainab, and more about shooting each other heated looks across tables and making catty remarks at each other. I'm not interested in them, but like I say, I like it better them just hating each other than being weird with Zainab. So hurrah. I guess.
And now it's really hot, so I'm going to go change, possibly.
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