whatsleftme

[whatsleftme]

It is genuinely unreal to me how gorgeous this man is. I--I just don't understand it. No exaggeration, he is the hottest man I have ever seen (both in real life and on screen), and I just don't understand how he never became a huge star (I understand that it was his choice, but, at the same time, part of stardom is out of a person's control).

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I was actually wondering if this was still going to happen given the situation in Iran (and, I believe, the subject of the show is the threat from Iran). Hopefully, they are able to handle the issue well.

At last!!!

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Funnily enough, I actually felt like Morse/Joan felt more unearned. I agree that Joan/Strange wasn't some great love or even love at all and I'm not even someone who rooted for them, but at least there was a suggestion of a natural progression--from acquaintances, to friends, to dating, to engagement, to marriage. It feels like way lazier writing to me that Morse falls in love with Joan the first time she opens the door and then, after very few interactions on-screen, he tells her she means the world to him and despairs over her running away. On top of that, if we are to believe that they really were in love, RL used the most cliched writing tool of will-they-won't-they from doing the most logical and natural thing of at least once going on a date.

The reason I could never be sold on Joan/Strange is they don't really know each other. Joan isn't aware of how comfortable Strange is with police brutality/doing whatever is needed for his career, and he has no idea what she's gone through the last several years. There was no conflict and resolution to their relationship. They came together like two people playing house, and it just never felt real or earned to me.

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I am so glad you bring up Morse's leap into full-on alcoholism in season 8. I still don't understand how he got there, and I don't think the show did a good job in showing us how he got there. If it was supposed to be about Venice and Violetta, then why did the show go out of its way to never mention her name after series 7 again? It was bizarre. It felt like the show was trying to completely ignore her and their relationship. There needed to be a clearer link between the end of season 7 and the start of season 8, and I think flashbacks--which the show has employed before--would have worked very well here.

endeavour musings, xvi

featuring: Terminus, s8e3 + why this better not be the end 1. WIN -- wut?. (Sidenote: I love the fact that Thursday calls her Winnie as a pet name. Pretty sure he does that in s6 too.) 2. The Bundy Clock scene. Yes, I do like the character exchange between Morse - Thursday afterwards, but it's one of the scenes where I think RL cheats at the expense of other characters to make Morse seem like a genius. (A previous example of this was in Oracle (s7e1), where Morse gets to explain to Thursday/Strange that the unique splaying of Professor Blish's fountain pen proves that it was him at the murder scene. Are fountain pens a historic topic that current audiences might not know? Well, yes. Is it something that Thursday + Strange would have known? Absolutely. [FYI, Thursday likely would have been taught as a child in the 1920s with a DIP PEN. He also has about 12 fountain pens on his desk in s1-3.] [Historical note: Handwriting as a means to identify criminals has been in practice by CID since the mid-1860s.] Again, a Bundy Clock would have been regular knowledge circa 1970 re bus riding, and would have been the kind of dogged police work that someone would check. I think this is lazy writing, and it's been happening more and more since s6. 3. We name-dropped 'Terminus' in Striker. 4. The Mystery Plot in this one is a bit of a stinker. Overly-convoluted, utterly implausible (maths do not work like that), and way too crowded. This is again an episode where multiple people are murdered in a particularly gruesome way to drive the plot forward, and I do Not Like it. Also, I gather they actually wanted to make a Slasher and TPTB said 'no' so they changed it to a Christie style big house in the country mystery but only half-heartedly so it's a weird conglomeration that doesn't really work. They took the setting of a Christie but didn't either understand / care how they actually work, which is about 1. social commentary 2. the Twist which is a clear reveal 3. justice in a communal setting / judgement. So it's a bit of a mess. 5. The number of female murderers in this show is actually ridiculous. Also: the number of serial murders in Oxford is doubly ridiculous. The implausible deus ex machina rescue at the end is trebly ridiculous and makes me yearn for Degeullo. 6. The Salvation of this Entire Episode rides on Thursday's shoulders: the scene where he tells Morse off for "checking their homework," where he calls him out for being a drunk, where he gets yelled at by Win, where he talks to Bright re Sam, where he talks to Creech, the Sun Comes Up scene. I do give 100+ pts to Morse for the "stop" scene in the bar after Thursday has called him on his drinking.

7. WIN. I don't appreciate that basically all the character development in this ep got given to Joan instead of Win. Also, none of these scenes work for me at all: I feel like RL has here a character who's just sort of a stock 1950s housewife trope and then he's trying to add emotional depth but it doesn't cohere so it just turns into a bizarre mess both of flat character and emotional responses that seem way off character. Part of it is we never see Win's response to Sam by herself, it's only ever through her response to Thursday. I understand that Win is supposed to have had it in this episode but honestly that's happened in s5, s6 and s7 so far so I just want Win to get some real character development and behave like an actual woman with character grit intregrity and a brain in her head, including: life experiences being bombed in the Blitz and working in the ATS and raising two children and generally being an awesome woman and mom with a great husband (who admittedly has a saving people thing). [This TED talk brought to you by the women of the-aleator's family who ironed their towels, did professional jobs, did their husband's accounts, travelled the world, and kept their families together through multiple deployments.]

8. I really don't get the people who say that the Strange-Joan plotline is just like Joan marrying her Dad. But I also agree that I don't love it as a romantic end-game, and that's definitely where we are going.

9. Shaun Evans / RL and I are going to have to disagree on Morse's drinking. Is Book!Morse a functional alcoholic? Yes, although how much given it was the 1970s.... Is Thaw!Morse? More arguable. Do I believe in the character progression that Endeavour is now a full-on non-functioning alcoholic as a result of Venice, is going to somehow "improve" his drinking enough to become the DCI Morse in the next 15 years? Characterisation marches on, but that seems like a real leap. 10. The Bright scene about staying with Thursday is so lovely and sad. Dorothea coming to Thursday's house at the drop of a hat is also lovely and sad but in a different way: he knows her well enough to know she'll want whiskey instead of tea. (Somebody please start a special AA/therapy group for all of these characters!) 11. {This post is getting LONG, so I'm going to placehold my notes on: intimacy, understanding, memory, secret relations for another post}. Last quick notes:

-As someone who lives in a place with more than 4' of snowfall every year, the fake snow / cold acting made me laugh.

-Also, Thursday's canonical father was a "devil with a drink," (why hello again Fred Thursday's CPTSD) and he implies he can't take care of Morse because of Sam; why won't you accept you've been adopted Morse (he just tidied your coat for you accept it)

-Strange calls the black Jag "his car" referring to Morse: are we supposed to think he's purchased it from the station? Or is just the one he always uses?? -Strange need to bite his pride and go hat-shopping with Thursday: he'll set him right.

-Dr DeBryn wins the best dressed for the 32nd episode.

[whatsleftme]

I really enjoy reading your Endeavour musings. I was particularly interested in your reference to Joan's DV as a plot device as I agree wholeheartedly. I was hoping you could go into your thinking a little bit more about that. In my view, it felt like Joan's DV and miscarriage/abortion was used just as a setting for more Joan/Morse angst (the "marry me" scene was not romantic in the least, to me, and actually signaled how tone-deaf Endeavour was to think that what Joan needed in that moment of vulnerability and hurt at the hands of a man she was in relationship with was a romantic overture by another man) and focused entirely on how Morse felt than on how Joan felt.

I absolutely agree that the scene is focused on how Morse feels, in that moment, seeing her as victim of DV, and yes, his offer is very tone-deaf. I think Sara Vickers does her best to counterbalance the scene, but it's absolutely Morse-centric (in both cinematography and emotional emphasis) -- about how her refusal devastates him, and I don't love it for that reason.

One of the reasons I see Joan's DV as a plot device is that it seems both unnecessary and gratuitous. It seems to be there just for Angst level. We never get any exploration of her trauma from being at the bank, because the DV trauma is heaped on-top and takes the focus. I also think it cheapens the way that Ray is taking advantage of her: a situation that was devastating in itself (Thursday's monologue in Muse springs to mind). Speaking of Thursday, I vaguely see RL's connection about the circle of violence: Thursday beating up Ray leads to Ray beating Joan and how it parallels and contrasts the other plots in Harvest; Seth killing Laxman for being "quick with a back-hander;" and Donald Bagley not wanting to commit violence because he "love[s]" peace and his wife more than killing. It's all very neatly done. But I'm a firm believer that significance of stories work when they build on real situations and people: so the disconnect between that here bothers me.

(I also question the believability of Ray beating Joan when he now has intimate knowledge that her father (1) knows where she is (2) knows who he is (3) has handily beaten him up (4) threatened to have him arrested as a pedophile.) Lastly, the very fact that Joan turns to Morse for safety and help, I feel is played because it's Morse-centric. Joan is an intelligent, strong-minded, stubborn woman who comes from a stable middle class background. Even if she "can't" go home (another point I find v unbelievable -- her mother wouldn't take her back?), she has no female friends who would help her? Or other support network? I'd be very interested in anyone's else take on the Joan & DV plot; I find it an unfortunate example of how RL struggles to write female characters.

[whatsleftme]

What's everyone's favorite Shaun Evans hair?

I think, for me, it was the untamed curls of season 3, or the handsome, elegant hair of season 7.

Share your faves with photos and explain why you like this hair the most.

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This guy and his pilfered shirts and shades...

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Petition for Shaun Evans to join the forthcoming Beatles biopic

The man is from Liverpool! Hire him as an early manager or something! Let him use his natural accent!

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It's official. This is my favorite Evans hair. Just long enough, just curly enough. Perfection.

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Can those Raga gifs count as a photo?

Due to lack of new content, today is TORTUROUS THURSDAY: Your hard drive/phone/cloud storage implodes and you can only recover THREE photos of Evans…which ones make the cut? And post in order of, um ‘importance’ please.

1. Um. That smile/laugh/squinchy little face. Curls. Black emo tneck. Socks.

2. No caption necessary. Even despite the manky vest.

3. (Emerges from shallow end of pool for an artistic shot) The arches. The reflection. Howwwww did he even notice that?!

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Random EndeavourShaun Evans Thoughts/Queries

Given how closely Shaun Evans guards his personal life, I don't think we know if he was involved during the filming of Endeavour, so I often wonder to myself, with each episode, which of the beautiful female guest actors or extras he may have hooked up with. Am I super weird, or does anyone else also wonder the same thing? I can't imagine, if he was single, that he wasn't hooking up left and right given his youth and devastatingly good looks.

Do we think he used tongue in kissing scenes, especially with Violetta? It doesn't look like it to me, but I could be wrong.

How the heck was he so easily able to slip between his natural accent and the Endeavour accent?? I noticed that he would speak in his natural accent in between takes and in BTS videos, and that just seems like it would be so hard to go between the two.

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I wish I had never discovered Endeavour

Ever since I discovered Endeavour a couple of months ago, I have become obsessed. No other shows I've tried to watch since have been able to fill the void, so now all I want to do is watch Shaun Evans content, of which there is far too little lol (although, I did discover Sparkle, which I absolutely adored and has become one of my favorite movies).

It doesn't help that the show has a relatively small online presence, so I haven't really been able to discuss my thoughts about the show with others, so I'm just thinking about it all of the time by myself.

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The hottest kiss in TV history.

RAGA.

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Wow.

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Morse/Joan was uninteresting

I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I feel like the show definitely overplayed the whole Morse/Joan thing. Not only did it go on for far too long with contrived reasons for keeping them apart, but I think the emphasis on the importance of Joan to Morse's life was to the detriment of the show, especially in the final season. I just never saw enough substance between them for Morse to feel that Joan was the love of his life and for this "love" to play such a pivotal role starting in season 3 onwards. The fact that we are supposed to see the loss of Joan in season 9 as the biggest reason for his sadness moving forward is just really unsatisfying for me.

I personally was more moved by his relationships with Violetta and Claudine than I was by his relationship with Joan.

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Here’s the Evans bit of the video. I love that he says ‘oh thanks very much’ to whatever she says to him

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One of JD's most well-acted moments. Love this scene.

whumptober no.23: I'm doing this for you