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I actually watched some! I was making my tracker for 'stuff I want to watch when I can' and decided to recheck if there is a way to stream Poker Face. There is! Season 1 at least. It was not what I expected, but I loved it.
*
One of the co-creators of Poker Face, who also did a lot of the writing, is Chris Downey, who co-created Leverage and did a lot of the writing there. I was expecting more Leverage / Oceans 11 vibes, but it's a Columbo AU.
Now I know was John Rogers was talking about what a modern Columbo remake would look like!
You see the crime first, then you see how Charlie Cale handles it. There are some differences because she's a lady on the run, but she even does his hand gestures and stuff. It's very directly and consciously a Columbo remake. It's got a lot of character and a lot went into some of these plots and mysteries. I was really impressed. If you know Leverage well enough to know who Chris Downey even is, a few structural things and also a major season finale plot point will have you drawing comparisons, but overall it's a very different show. It's very into a specific vintage American Southwest rugged noir-esque thing.
* I also watched Sanctuary, no not the Urban Fantasy project starring Amanda Tapping, it was a show about witches adapated from a novel that ran on A&E. I should have stopped watching about 1/3rd of the way through, but I wanted to see how the mystery shook out because my brain is dumb.
Why did I keep watching after it became clear that we were supposed to root for the lady who just rewrote the personalities of a few people with magic? Like the whole intended theme that magic is good and witches are persecuted for no reason is kinda undercut by the fact that a lot of the bad things that happen on the show are a direct result of her rewriting a few people. WTF?
Also, it's a mystery story that introduce multiple major characters very late in the series. We have reason to think that there are no other witches in the area, then suddenly!
The ending was so annoying and smug. We're just supposed to ignore that the lady literally made most of her own problems and would have been protected if she hadn't been rewriting the personalities of men to please their wives?
The cost of A&E subscriptions is going up so I cancelled and decided to see if there was anything there I wanted to see. I really, really should have tapped out of that one.
*
One of the co-creators of Poker Face, who also did a lot of the writing, is Chris Downey, who co-created Leverage and did a lot of the writing there. I was expecting more Leverage / Oceans 11 vibes, but it's a Columbo AU.
Now I know was John Rogers was talking about what a modern Columbo remake would look like!
You see the crime first, then you see how Charlie Cale handles it. There are some differences because she's a lady on the run, but she even does his hand gestures and stuff. It's very directly and consciously a Columbo remake. It's got a lot of character and a lot went into some of these plots and mysteries. I was really impressed. If you know Leverage well enough to know who Chris Downey even is, a few structural things and also a major season finale plot point will have you drawing comparisons, but overall it's a very different show. It's very into a specific vintage American Southwest rugged noir-esque thing.
* I also watched Sanctuary, no not the Urban Fantasy project starring Amanda Tapping, it was a show about witches adapated from a novel that ran on A&E. I should have stopped watching about 1/3rd of the way through, but I wanted to see how the mystery shook out because my brain is dumb.
Why did I keep watching after it became clear that we were supposed to root for the lady who just rewrote the personalities of a few people with magic? Like the whole intended theme that magic is good and witches are persecuted for no reason is kinda undercut by the fact that a lot of the bad things that happen on the show are a direct result of her rewriting a few people. WTF?
Also, it's a mystery story that introduce multiple major characters very late in the series. We have reason to think that there are no other witches in the area, then suddenly!
The ending was so annoying and smug. We're just supposed to ignore that the lady literally made most of her own problems and would have been protected if she hadn't been rewriting the personalities of men to please their wives?
The cost of A&E subscriptions is going up so I cancelled and decided to see if there was anything there I wanted to see. I really, really should have tapped out of that one.
no subject
Date: 2025-01-15 03:26 am (UTC)From:But ugh. I have a hard time tapping out of things, because I do usually want to see how they end. I should probably get better at saying fuck it. That show definitely sounds like a mess. (I hate when there's a major theme that is actively undercut by the main character, yet the narrative wants you to just go with it.)
no subject
Date: 2025-01-18 04:08 am (UTC)From:Yeah, I wish I could tap out of things. As soon as it was clear that the hero just, no big deal, rewrote men for the benefit of their wives, I should have noped out
no subject
Date: 2025-01-21 03:46 am (UTC)From:I am SO bad at tapping out of things, even when I know I'm not enjoying it. It's super rare for a book or even a movie to get DNF'd.
Yeah... that is super skeevy. Not to get too tangential, but I really, really loathe when that sort of thing is presented as like... "feminist win!" or whatever, because fucking YIKES. No! Removing bodily autonomy is not a feminist act!
I'm not going to say that something doing a sort of riff off of The Stepford Wives via magic making perfect husbands *couldn't* be a fun story, or that it couldn't work as a revenge narrative against an abusive partner, or whatever. But portraying it as a heroic act, or "lol what a girlboss" is skeevy as fuck.
no subject
Date: 2025-01-23 04:39 pm (UTC)From:Falls very into 'why is this presented as good and not as a horror story?'
no subject
Date: 2025-01-24 05:20 am (UTC)From:That is one of my least favorite things. I *like* horror, but I want the horror to be aware that it IS horror, y'know? Things that are presented as "romantic" or "empowering" or "aspirational" or whatever that feel and read like horror? Yuck.
(I mean, I guess maybe the realization that "oh. oh, you think this is a GOOD thing." IS the real horror, but still.)
no subject
Date: 2025-01-25 07:58 pm (UTC)From: