Previously on Nashville: Gunnar brought his “it’s just casual” girlfriend on the road in a professional capacity, Gabriella blathered on about the lines between business and pleasure, [Janes: UGH Gabriella. I was hoping I could forget about her forever.] Deacon opened a dumb bar, Rayna signed Markus Keen and took away Maddie’s phone; Juliette almost killed herself and Gabriella kept Colt silent about it; and Juliette went to rehab, finally.
No one delves into a character’s psychology quite like Henry James, and in Isabel Archer, he found a protagonist more than worthy of his meticulous deconstruction. She’s a formidable intellectual who doesn’t see the value in intellectual pursuits, she’s an idealist who isn’t quite sure what her ideals are, she’s an independent who is completely and utterly controlled by the malignant, vicious people in her life. She has a complex, distinctive personality and an indomitable will, all of which is systematically broken down by a small man with “exquisite taste.” It’s as tragic as it is insightful, sensitively portraying the experience of patriarchal oppression through the eyes of a woman who is determined to “behave picturesquely.”
Acquired: through kht, who warned me I would relate to the protagonist to an uncomfortable extent. I’ve thrice been told that I am like Isabel Archer, once as a lament, once as a compliment [To be clear, this was me –kht], and once as a scathing criticism. Only a Henry James character could find so many different ways to be relatable to a real person’s life.
As has happened to us a lot this month, we fell behind on our Homeland recaps, but we decided to at least do the finale in a more timely fashion because, well, there’s a lot to talk about. You know what I mean.
Previously on Homeland…
I decided to recap the season finale before catching up on episode 9 of this season. Even though I think it shows the same fragmentation between Alicia’s storylines and those of the lawyers who were once her colleagues, Diane and Cary, it was a pretty great episode—and, I hope, it will be pivotal for Alicia’s character.
We open with the longest “Previously”s known to man which, as kht rightly complained last week, hammers the “Banana Joe’s” reveal into our heads so hard I now have a concussion. Last week, Allison says Banana Joe’s has the best daiquiris. Carrie sees the bar Banana Joe’s in a picture of Ahmed. She hears Allison say Banana Joe’s has the best daiquiris in voiceover, in case we didn’t just hear it one goddamn minute ago. Okay, okay, Banana Joe’s is important. WE GET IT NOW.
I will start by saying I did not have high hopes for this episode. I mean, it’s like going into a Gilmore Girls episode that is named “All About Digger.” Or an Affair episode named “All About Noah.” Like, is my entire recap just going to be, “Shut up, Allison”?
And this turned out to be a fairly boring episode, but learning more about Allison was actually useful and enjoyable.
In his first letter to a young poet, Rainer Maria Rilke mused, “Things aren’t all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered.” He finds himself confronted with the paradox inherent to most poetry, namely that it aims to express the inexpressible. Continue reading →
TV has been a bit too topical lately, hasn’t it? This was another episode that I wasn’t sure it would be a great idea to recap, after the tragedy at Planned Parenthood. In case any of our readers haven’t been entirely deadened to mass shootings and might find reminders of that event upsetting, please consider this a warning, and an apology if it seems tactless.
Surreptitious cell-phone video makes a second appearance this season. A woman is shown on a shaky phone-cam video eating frozen yogurt and talking casually about “harvesting” a “product.” The product, it eventually becomes clear, is specifically parts. Fetus parts. For the price of $100. Ethan, showing the video to Diane, is up on his high horse about this, but Diane argues that it’s for “preserving, packaging and delivering,” not selling, baby parts, and that the video is just propaganda. Ethan argues that Americans only support abortion if they don’t have to face the facts about it. Then they have this mystifying exchange:
Diane: The majority of Americans only support anything if they don’t have to face the fact of it! How the hamburger ended up on their plate…
Ethan: Except this has a face. It’s not an appendix. It’s a human being.
Um… What exactly does Ethan think a hamburger is? A grilled appendix on a bun?
Well, it’s been a busy couple weeks for all of us at Adversion. Our recaps may have fallen behind, but rest assured, we are committed to parsing every single second of our favorite shows for sexism, hidden meanings, and opportunities to make fun of Scarlett.
In the first half of Emma Donoghue’s meticulously psychological Room, the character of Ma is just that—she’s a mother. She’s a near-saintly, self-sacrificing angel who unfailingly thinks of everything and always knows how to make everything better. She’s also not a person in her own right, but that’s the entire point, as the story is told from her five-year-old son’s perspective. To him, she is just “Ma,” because he’s never known her to be anything else. Continue reading →
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