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Post by Lola m on Jan 27, 2008 1:36:59 GMT -5
I've been off this board for a long time. I just had to check in to say this is the best thing JM has done since Buffy. He was perfect in it. The right mix of sex, villainy and polymorphys perversity. The repartee was charged and very funny. I read he'll be back at least once more. If they haven't finished shootin ghte season I hope it's more than that. Rusty! Hey there! Wasn't it a totally wonderful romp of an ep?! Absolutely loved James in this. He really got to pull out all the stops.  |
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Post by Lola m on Jan 27, 2008 1:42:44 GMT -5
Crossover squee: I am delighted with JM doing such a good job translating this character and making him different from Spike, despite the cocky, sexy-bastard stereotype. JM worked out the differences between the two so I'm really impressed. Which is a conversation for later when I am not so tired, but please feel free to take it up in my absence...  Looking forward to the next ep.  Hmph. I had quite the opposite reaction - I just thought it was Spike redux, and couldn't see any truly significant character differences. And I'm with Spring; the single entendres got old very quickly. Hey, to each their own. If we all liked things the same, what a dull world this would be, eh? I think the thing that was different from Spike was the underlying . . . non-humanity, as it were, of this character. Spike, as a vamp, was alwyas too human. And John, underneath it all, is really really not. Well, you could just join the very large shallow part of me that is perfectly happy to just enjoy looking. Stop expecting anything else and then you can be pleasantly surprised when something else good pops up. |
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Post by Lola m on Jan 27, 2008 1:44:06 GMT -5
Oh, yeah, to all of that. Julia, especially Capt. John's reaction to Capt. Jack's revival. And Ianto's shirt. **nods** The revival and reaction to same were very interesting to me. Because that totally scared the crap out of John. And I can think of at least two very different reasons why that would be so. |
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Post by KMInfinity on Jan 27, 2008 8:34:05 GMT -5
Loved the episode. I think the thing that was different from Spike was the underlying . . . non-humanity, as it were, of this character. Spike, as a vamp, was alwyas too human. And John, underneath it all, is really really not. ITA with this Lola....Plus, for me, Spike's glory in violence was really about his own inner rage. He wasn't *really* enjoying all the blood and gore and destruction...he was smart enough and human enough as a vamp to say, 'This (vampirism) is what defines me, I've got to embrace it." while really still having a tiny piece of that sweet nerdy William still inside. (Despite what Buffy and Giles think-that the vamp has NO shared identity with the victim.) John, however, really does seem to be living beyond *human* morality. He might be what we call a good guy at times (rescuing that dude in the beginning) but he also has no qualms about extreme violence to reach a goal. Instead of reveling in the violence, he seemed more matter o' fact about it....except with the meeting with Jack, where the violence kinda rolled into the sex and heat and the emotion. John might be *moral* but based on a very non-human understanding of that word. I had a heart-thud when John asked to join the team....sure hope John is a recurring character and JM can work him in. I'm speculating that Grey is Jack's child. Looked like a child's hand being held in that dreamy sequence. Gotta watch again! |
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Post by beccaelizabeth on Jan 27, 2008 12:12:30 GMT -5
I was reading on LJ and an interesting dichotomy in readings came up: US vs UK connotations to do with Captain Jack Harkness. Apparently the US readers were seeing some all American hero type, morally upright and all that stuff, and assuming that 'what Jack does' = 'what the writers approve of'. Which is somewhat surprising to UK viewers, since he's an American in WWII therefore the first association is that 'oversexed and over here' bit, that he's the kind of guy your (grand)mother warned you about. There's a discussion thread and someone else posted in their LJ being all *smiley with the big eyes / facepalm* Which was interesting cause I hadn't consciously thought of that but I'd certainly been reading him that way. (I also said this on the main board and there was talking. bit before that link. I lazy and no find it.) |
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Post by Rachael on Jan 27, 2008 12:29:55 GMT -5
Well, I'm gonna give this ep another shot, and try not to see all the sexual innuendo, 'cause it really was interfering with my ability to analyze the plot. I do wonder, if they're all still alive after Jack was gone for so long...if maybe Gwen is a better leader. I mean...one episode with Jack again, and the bad guy is getting the drop on them all over again. Also? Someone (can't recall who this second) said that they thought one difference between John and Spike was John's lack of humanity. I have to disagree there. He's all too human, actually. Still hung up on an old flame, willing to do whatever it takes to get rich, despairing of life meaning anything...and at least two of those humanizing factors were shared in common with Spike - the "old flame" bit - first Dru, then Buffy - and the "whatever it takes" to get not necessarily rich, but powerful. Gem of Amara, anyone? I didn't get the impression, at all, that he was hurting people for anything other than expediency, and he didn't kill when he didn't need to ("need" in the sense of making his con go off as planned) - in fact, he left them alive with a fair shot at survival. Had he wanted Gwen dead, he could have shot her in the head. Same for Owen (how many nonfatal gunshot wounds is Owen going to get? Not that I mind.). He could easily have gotten Ianto to run away by telling him Owen/Gwen/Tosh were still alive, even if they weren't. Why he didn't kill them is up for debate - IMO, we don't know the character well enough to really speculate. But one reason might be that he figured killing his team would make it less likely that Jack would run away with him. Another is that he doesn't kill unless it's required. Seems less likely, but possible. The first possibility makes him very Spike-like; the second illustrates that he is still human. |
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Post by Shan on Jan 27, 2008 17:24:33 GMT -5
Well, I'm gonna give this ep another shot, and try not to see all the sexual innuendo, 'cause it really was interfering with my ability to analyze the plot. I do wonder, if they're all still alive after Jack was gone for so long...if maybe Gwen is a better leader. I mean...one episode with Jack again, and the bad guy is getting the drop on them all over again. Also? Someone (can't recall who this second) said that they thought one difference between John and Spike was John's lack of humanity. I have to disagree there. He's all too human, actually. Still hung up on an old flame, willing to do whatever it takes to get rich, despairing of life meaning anything...and at least two of those humanizing factors were shared in common with Spike - the "old flame" bit - first Dru, then Buffy - and the "whatever it takes" to get not necessarily rich, but powerful. Gem of Amara, anyone? I didn't get the impression, at all, that he was hurting people for anything other than expediency, and he didn't kill when he didn't need to ("need" in the sense of making his con go off as planned) - in fact, he left them alive with a fair shot at survival. Had he wanted Gwen dead, he could have shot her in the head. Same for Owen (how many nonfatal gunshot wounds is Owen going to get? Not that I mind.). He could easily have gotten Ianto to run away by telling him Owen/Gwen/Tosh were still alive, even if they weren't. Why he didn't kill them is up for debate - IMO, we don't know the character well enough to really speculate. But one reason might be that he figured killing his team would make it less likely that Jack would run away with him. Another is that he doesn't kill unless it's required. Seems less likely, but possible. The first possibility makes him very Spike-like; the second illustrates that he is still human. All good points I'm still thinking on but which have also made another tingle go off in my head about the difference between Spike and John. It seemed to me that Spike had to have someone to love to have a reason for being, but John just has to have a game to play. Those are both very human traits each so I agree with you that their difference isn't so much in that one is more human, but that one (Spike, if I need to say it out loud) is more humane. But they're what I see as big differences in the two characters. JM gave Spike that puppy-dog "love me" look a lot. But he gives off something different as John. He's not so emotionally soft. Spike's vulnerabilities are widely known and exploited and he lives with it by allowing it because he needs it. John's aren't. The most vulnerable he seems is with Jack, but how hung up on the old flame could John have been to push him off a roof? Unless it was in a "if I can't have you, nobody can" kind of way. Which didn't really get backed up by the way he didn't really express much regret over Jack's "dead" body. And in his last scene, John gives himself the emotional upper hand by making it clear that he knew (and possibly had access to) a major vulnerability of Jack's. Starting a new game to play to keep him going. And I think JM did all of that well. On the single entendres. Personally, having watched a lot of UK television, I just take it with a little smile. They do sex-on-TV in a much different way than we do in the US, and they do gay sexuality in a VERY different way. So for me, the constant wink-wink, nudge-nudge is just funny, not the way some of us might take it as "What, are you all 12?" but just as a lighthearted joke about something that's not that big a deal. They also do the entendres in a character-related way, so it's not like the writers just put naughty words in the mouths of whoever they can, whenever they can. Well, that's all I have right now. Maybe more later! And can I just say I loved the Western flavor of the bar scene, when Jack goes through the double doors? Someone else may have mentioned it but I just had to mention it again! |
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Post by S'ewing S'cubie on Jan 27, 2008 17:28:11 GMT -5
Crossover squee: I am delighted with JM doing such a good job translating this character and making him different from Spike, despite the cocky, sexy-bastard stereotype. JM worked out the differences between the two so I'm really impressed. Which is a conversation for later when I am not so tired, but please feel free to take it up in my absence... Looking forward to the next ep. **nods** With the accent and the sexy and the cocky bastard thing, I was expecting to have him be completely Spike to me as I watched. Only, not really. I mean, yeah, of course I had "oh, that's so Spike-ish" moments, but this was definitely a different character. There was the whole cool coat and boots thing, the sexy bad boy, the male-male love/hate thing, the amoral but funny AND the deep voiced quasi-British accent-- but what there wasn't was Spike. So great. |
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Post by beccaelizabeth on Jan 27, 2008 17:42:07 GMT -5
Which didn't really get backed up by the way he didn't really express much regret over Jack's "dead" body.
Which version of the episode did you watch? The one with the lip touching?
seriously, there's two edits I've seen in the UK and I don't know if the US has one or the other or a whole other one.
In one of them there was sniffing, like trying not to cry maybe, in the other he just picked up the cannister and left.
I think he pushed him off the roof because he's failed rehabs and is messed up in the head and has a whole impulse control problem, plus possibly some cause/effect issues. I have a theory about the time loop they were stuck in - five years of having everything reset after two weeks? If it was a groundhog day thing. Don't know if either of them died in it, but... Would be enough to mess with the whole causality habit, yesno? I'm not sure he'd connected 'shove Jack cause he's angry' with 'no more Jack any more'. At least not in advance. Don't know though, could be he's just enough of a bastard he'll go around killing his ex for funnies. But then why not kill the team? *shrugs*
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Post by Shan on Jan 27, 2008 18:52:11 GMT -5
Which didn't really get backed up by the way he didn't really express much regret over Jack's "dead" body.Which version of the episode did you watch? The one with the lip touching? seriously, there's two edits I've seen in the UK and I don't know if the US has one or the other or a whole other one. In one of them there was sniffing, like trying not to cry maybe, in the other he just picked up the cannister and left. I think he pushed him off the roof because he's failed rehabs and is messed up in the head and has a whole impulse control problem, plus possibly some cause/effect issues. I have a theory about the time loop they were stuck in - five years of having everything reset after two weeks? If it was a groundhog day thing. Don't know if either of them died in it, but... Would be enough to mess with the whole causality habit, yesno? I'm not sure he'd connected 'shove Jack cause he's angry' with 'no more Jack any more'. At least not in advance. Don't know though, could be he's just enough of a bastard he'll go around killing his ex for funnies. But then why not kill the team? *shrugs* I watched the episode with the lip-touching. So I should have qualified: John's regret for Jack's death didn't get backed up for me. It could have been my bias toward (or against) the character, but I watched it more than once and the sniffing didn't register with me as anything much more than "Oh...I just murdered my ex-spouse...dang...what a waste of pretty.". And he took the wrist device first, gloating. That was just my take on it. I'm not sure I buy the whole disconnect between cause and effect, though. He sure knew enough about cause and effect to be able to put enough of a spin on why he was there to get them to help him. It's possible he killed his ex and not the rest of the team because either, as Owen said, he underestimated them or he just didn't think enough OF them to consider them worth killing. Jack, OTOH, seriously pissed him off, made it very clear that not only was there was absolutely nothing left between them, on a personal or "professional" level, but he was actively working against him now. Jack told John to move on and maybe that was his way of doing it, by killing him. In which case, I totally agree with your assessment of how messed up in the head he is. To be fair, I haven't spent time thinking about the mental/emotional ramifications of their 5-year time loop relationship at all. But I'm sure there will be a lot of slashfic about it. |
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Post by rich on Jan 27, 2008 19:06:14 GMT -5
I see the characters as different. John is greedy; a mercenary through and through. Spike was a failed romantic. Spike reveled in his emotional life. While John has feelings, they seem an inconvenience to him. He allowed himself a moment of sorrow and loss over killing Jack, then he moved on right away. Maybe he's a failed idealist. That would at least give him a rough parallel to Spike's arc. When I see John I see a cop or a soldier (whatever a time agent is) who for some reason, decides that the best policy is to look out for number one and abuses his position and knowledge to do it. He's more a character out of Kipling (think Michael Caine or Sean Connery in "The Man Who Would Be King"), than out of Whedon for me.
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Post by Spaced Out Looney on Jan 27, 2008 19:55:31 GMT -5
I saw James as playing a completely different character, despite all the similarities to Spike.
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Post by Shan on Jan 27, 2008 21:19:06 GMT -5
I saw James as playing a completely different character, despite all the similarities to Spike. Any particular reason why? |
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Post by beccaelizabeth on Jan 28, 2008 7:10:00 GMT -5
To be fair, I haven't spent time thinking about the mental/emotional ramifications of their 5-year time loop relationship at all. But I'm sure there will be a lot of slashfic about it. oh yes. and already some of it is even good. Of course the other possibility is - Jack said 2 weeks, John said 5 years... was Jack *in* the time loop, or did John spend 5 years with him and Jack only spend 2 weeks? I think they were both there, but I could spin fic out of either possibility. |
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Post by Lola m on Jan 28, 2008 8:21:13 GMT -5
I was reading on LJ and an interesting dichotomy in readings came up: US vs UK connotations to do with Captain Jack Harkness. Apparently the US readers were seeing some all American hero type, morally upright and all that stuff, and assuming that 'what Jack does' = 'what the writers approve of'. Which is somewhat surprising to UK viewers, since he's an American in WWII therefore the first association is that 'oversexed and over here' bit, that he's the kind of guy your (grand)mother warned you about. There's a discussion thread and someone else posted in their LJ being all *smiley with the big eyes / facepalm* Which was interesting cause I hadn't consciously thought of that but I'd certainly been reading him that way. (I also said this on the main board and there was talking. bit before that link. I lazy and no find it.) Interesting. I guess I don't tend to think of Jack as being "what the writer's approve", although I do think of him as the leader of TW, but just as flawed and screwed up at times as any of the other. And he is the technical leader guy, which will make this new season cool, because we'll see how or if he becomes the leader or the same kind of leader, since Gwen stepped in and the whole group has been working without him. But, now that I read this, I can certainly see how US and UK audiences would each be looking thru their own lenses . . . Plus, there's the whole "he's only created one persona that is WWII American GI guy, and there's a lot of other people inside him". |
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