#THE REGRESSION/FALLING BACK INTO HER OLD WAYS/BACKWARDS CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT COULD HAVE BEEN SO GOOD!!!!!!

[plentyelegant]

thinks about how much better Allison's s3 character arc could have been. thinks about how much better Allison's s3 character arc could have been. thinks about how much better Allison's s3 character arc could have been. thinks abou

[flying-elliska]

S5 Review pt 2 : the Bad

So in my last meta I listed a lot of reasons to like this season...but then why did it not (at least to me) all add up together ?  Looking back, I can think of so many clips that I thought were incredible. But looking back at the season in general, I just feel a big ‘meh’ and it’s sort of puzzling - why exactly ?  Here is where I thought the season could have been a lot better :

I loathe love triangles : I hate the trope in itself. Is S5 the worst example of it ever ? No, it served somewhat of a thematic purpose and the resolution was interesting. But I can’t help it, when I feel a love triangle coming on, I generally disconnect emotionally because I have been annoyed to hell and back by it before - one big offender being Skam France s4, in which the love triangle/quadrangle marked the beginning of the season going down in flames, with it overshadowing everything else and making the characters behave in completely obnoxious and puzzling ways. S5 isn’t quite as bad, it feels more respectful of the characters, but I find it weird that the writers chose a love triangle again on the heels of the reception of s4. 

The problem with this trope is not ‘oh we don’t want drama ever’ it’s just so bloody annoying, so trite and overused. It rests on centuries of sexist tropes : either a wishy washy girl in the middle who doesn’t know what’s good for her/her own heart ; or two girls competing for a man’s attentions. It often ends in the fandom villifying the women involved no matter the shape of the triangle, comparing them against each other, which definitely happened this time (Twitter was just so annoying this season), and this whole ‘team x’ thing gives me hives, as the assumption that this is what young women viewers care most about. 

Also it generally involves the characters showing that they have very little self respect, letting themselves be walked over, bad communication, implications about what the ‘better woman/man’ should be like, cheating, etc...it’s very rarely fun or interesting to watch because we’ve seen it a thousand times before in teenage soap operas. Again, the s5 ending avoided the total trainwreck but this is a show you watch in real time, and for weeks I was afraid it was going to be absolutely terrible, and it ruined a big part of my experience of the season. When they introduced Noée I started being scared, and when it became clear Arthur was developing feelings for her, I basically noped out emotionally. I started following it in a much more detached manner, I wasn’t looking forward to the clips anymore, I stopped writing meta so much. And it sucks. I wanted to love the season. But this was just not a ride I really wanted to be on. 

Alexia (and Noee) deserved better : I love Alexia and developing her character is one of the best things Skam France ever did. In OG, the character of Chris, if interesting, is just continually reduced to the ‘funny fat friend’ persona and it really sucks. So giving Alexia a real personality, making her bisexual, giving her more of a role in s3, making her a dancer and a singer was really cool. I’m bi myself and I spent most of my high school struggling with my weight and if I’d had a character like her, who radiates self-acceptance, it would have meant so much to me. I was really stoked for her to have more of a role in s5 - only to spend most of the season feeling really sad for her. It was just...not fun. I so wish she could have had her own season and her own story that didn’t revolve around a dude she was so supportive of and still ended up treating her like shit. 

Also, real talk : when is a curvy girl actually a love interest without it being shown as funny or not good enough ? Especially of the main character ? Almost never. Coline might have lost some weight, but she’s still written as a curvy girl this season and it’s an important part of the character. So for her to have this particular role this season - the girl that isn’t romanticized, that doesn’t get to have the cute and thrilling moments, that is just sort of there and patient and understanding as if she couldn’t get anything better, it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Sure the end of the season did her more justice but god it took so long and in the meantime, it just felt...very ill considered and careless. 

In the same way, I wanted to love Noée, I thought she was amazing, but because of her role in the plot I just felt this instinctive defiance towards her character. It would have been so cool to have her in a friend role, or even a love interest outside of the triangle or I don’t know like...have someone else fall in love with her. Also, I just did not understand why she loved Arthur ? Like she just met the dude a few times, and he’s mostly been a total asshole to her, who makes very little efforts to communicate with her...I get she could get attracted to him but love ??? The moment where she tells him ‘I love you’ felt demeaning to her, like the moment in OG where Noora falls after running after William. It’s like, Arthur has just been an enormous asshole to her, and she pushes herself to do something she’s never been comfortable with in the first place ? Why ? This show romanticizes teenage boys being assholes and girls being desperate way too much. 

The Skam dilemma, love vs politics and “Let’s all just be nice.” : There is a reoccuring problem accross all Skams, starting with the OG : they bring up very political topics, usually in the beginning of the season, and then they...don’t really do anything with them. In the OG, Noora’s feminism is really just window-dressing and we see her bend over backwards to accomodate this super toxic asshole into her life. And we see Sana’s struggles as a Muslim in Norwegian society, but then love drama takes over, and it’s waved away with an insulting ‘everyone should just communicate more’ ending. Skamfr s4 made it even worse, by making the girl squad a lot more overtly racist, never having them make a big gesture for Imane, putting her in a position to apologize, and never showing that the girl squad had an idea of where they messed up or real growth. It was insanely frustrating, especially since the beginning of the season was so good at showing all the little micro-agressions. In the end it felt like all the racism was just there to motivate Imane’s breakdown for plot reasons and not to actually say something. S5 never stoops quite that low, but there was a bit of a similar dynamic at hand here. Instead of the boys actually have a real conversation after their fight, most of the denouement of the show was consecrated to talking about the love drama. It was, again, as if the focus of the show was on the wrong things, and it robs you of the catharsis you’re expecting. As if they used the love drama for a metaphor for the actual issues, have it do all the emotional heavy lifting, and in so doing bypass having to adress the actual problem. There is this weird ideas that the audience of the show - teenagers and young women, mostly, in the end care the most about the love stuff and that everything else has to take a backseat and...this feels neither a good message to send, nor realistic to me. I like it when shows about teenagers decenter love and show the real complexity of their characters’ lives without making them paragons of virtue or wokeness - Derry Girls is a brilliant example of that. Skam, and Skam France in particular, feel a bit immature still compared to those, punching below their weight for shows that pride themselves on their social impact. 

Hit with the idiot stick : Speaking of underwhelming resolutions - yes, the boy squad messing up with Arthur, I found relevant and realistic. But...did they really even adress it ? I was really hoping for the boys to have more of a conversation, for Arthur to open up to them about what he went through, about his father, to tell them that they should have asked him/listened to him more, etc...and I know ‘teenage boys’ or whatever but ...aren’t they trying to change those stereotypes too ? Like when Arthur went to see Basile, they must have had a conversation, why the fuck did we not see it ? That’s the emotional bond I cared most about ! And we just had a hug ...underwhelming tbh. Same Arthur talking with Lucas but then it was just about their love lives ? Or when they came to the hospital, again, it was just about the love drama ? God it really sucked out the oxygen out of the season. The resolutions of those things just being hugs or speeches or handholding at the end felt hollow, and a lot less powerful than they could have been. And again, there has to be a tolerance for messiness, but I found the boys so incredibly dumb at several points in the season. Especially them being like ‘oh cheating isn’t so bad’ after they found out that Arthur’s dad was cheating on his wife ? Like why the fuck did they take Patrick’s side ? What kind of lack of empathy ? It would feel a lot more coherent for teenage boys to be furious at the destruction of a friend’s family, not talk like cynical 50 yr olds who just divorced for the fifth time. It felt so unrealistic and stupid and just meant for Arthur to finally clue in to the idea that cheating and lying is bad maybe, himself first without external clues from characters that really should have known better by now. Especially Yann and Lucas advising Arthur to keep his mouth shut after what happened in s1 like...did whoever write this read the previous seasons of the show ? There were just too many times where the boy squad felt out of character and mandated to be idiots just for plot reasons, and it felt...very crudely drawn. Disappointing, because the beginning of the season was awesome. But again, Skam France failed in delivering real growth for their friend group. At times, it even felt like character regression. Them holding hands at the end of the season made me emo but damn it could have been so much more.

Also some plot twists - the car crash in particular, just felt dumb and unnecessary, seriously. 

A too distant main : In the end, like I said before, my main issue is that I didn’t feel as connected to Arthur as I wanted to. I mean, the cheating bit was just very unrelatable to me, after how they showed how supportive Alexia was and how she supposedly made him happy like...why. But maybe that’s just me. Regardless - in the first few episodes he felt distant in an interesting way, because it made sense for his character to be so walled off. But...I felt like his self discovery was way too blurred with the ‘oh I like Noee’ part to the point where it ended up being obscured. I would have loved more clips on his own, maybe something more about him questioning his path in life, whether he truly wants to do medecine. And like apparently he liked fine arts ? Then, why didn’t we see anything about that ? Did he paint the x-men painting ??? That feels so relevant, why the fuck didn’t we see that ? Also why didn’t we see him take those LSF classes with Camille and actually make an effort this time ? Having almost all of his realization moments tied to Noee was just...the manic pixie dream girl trope. That’s what it’s called, when you use a quirky female character as a device for the emotional development of the male one. It’s...not flattering tbh. And then that farm episode - it was funny but for a week I felt like I completely lost touch with Arthur’s POV ? I’m really not sure that was the right choice. All in all, there were just not enough introspective, small, intimate clips for it to really feel like Skam, and that’s a shame tbh. I recognize a lot of myself in Arthur, and Robin acted his heart out to make him relatable, but because of the writing, there were way too many times where I was reluctant and puzzled instead of in it. I saw several people saying it was too much tell and not enough show and I think that’s very on point. I feel like a lot of Arthur’s actual character development happened behind the scenes in moments where we didn’t see it.  

Yeah...I think as a conclusion most of my issues are tied back to the preponderance of the love triangle. The season wasn’t bad but god it could have been so excellent if they hadn’t gone that route, and this swerve from greatness is just sooooooo frustrating. I don’t think it’s enough to condemn the whole season but...

Next up : some things I’m just very ??? about and a general conclusion. 

Bonus bitching round, fandom edition : oh my god, I don’t get into this often but...the fandom was so bloody annoying this season. Starting with the people sending death threats over a tv show (like...what the fuck) or thinking them being nasty assholes is somehow for the greater good (???), from people that don’t want anyone to use even 1 analysis capacity (especially on Twitter) and go beyond praising everything on the show, or the people either villifying Alexia and Noee and indulging in that ‘team’ crap, to the people that shoot down every single detail of the show without discernment or accuse the creators of being ableist sexist garbage or maltreating their actors ... And then you have the other remake stans coming to pollute the tags talking about how we were all stupid for liking the show in the first place. Like...seriously, what is up with you people. I really loved the block button this season, damn. 

[elizabethrobertajones]

I'm not saying you agree with that TLJ article since you tagged it 'mh', but I'm very worried but this latest trend 'Your opinion is wrong because of internalized ___'. Some movies just suck? Like, I hated Ghostbusters 2 because it was bad. I was perfectly okay with having four women as main characters, but that can't be your whole idea for a movie.

I do think that article is interesting, and trying to describe what is basically a wider cultural phenomenon. I’m sure on case by case basis you could rarely boil it down to just a few specific factors and “diagnose” someone except for really obvious lifelong character types who would be in the most obvious demographic. 

Star Wars *already* got a bunch of sexist and racist backlash before TFA, so it’s already in the bracket of movies which got thrown together as the collection of SJWs are ruining our childhood movies like Mad Max, Ghostbusters, etc, so it’s also definitely not like this is a wild stab in the dark that it has pre-existing tension, although in this case the reaction is still really split. But I can see why it’s easy to examine it this way and analyse where it might make people uncomfortable, and wonder to what degree people are prepared to let go of Leading White Man formula for mega blockbusters. 

Something like Wonder Woman, people know what they’re getting into when they see it in the sense that the franchise is completely built around there being a female character in the lead role. So that stands quite alone. And it’s not like there haven’t been action movies with female leads in the past either, but the re-casting in the case of Ghostbusters, or just development of interesting female characters who aren’t beholden to a cookie cutter template/romance arc within a supposedly male-dominated franchise (Furiosa, especially) and changing up old franchises to have more diverse cast (Star Wars) or just completely flip the “male is the default” idea like Ghostbusters and Oceans 8, are deliberately challenging and in some cases - the last 2 especially - are pretty much thumbing the nose to the idea of all-male casts being unremarkable and default. Whether the movies are *good* or not (I thought Ghostbusters was about on the level of, say, a Ghostbusters movie for quality and humour, so okay basically :P) they’re culturally significant at a time when it seems both bizarre and horrifically slow and backwards that we *still* don’t have *even just getting male and female representation right, never mind race and sexuality and disability representation* (I mean for that last point - in some ways these films are already going to be regressive by the time other progressive steps are made, for example Charlize Theron wearing a green screen glove to delete her arm, instead of just hiring an actress with half an arm which is the immediately less-expensive and fiddly route to get the aesthetic…)

But idk, it’s not even like Star Wars was either perfect or extremely progressive, it just managed *not* to have 2-3 white male leads + some other people in the background, and to allow the non white male people to have such a stake in the story they could mess up and make decisions that affected the fate of the galaxy - often negatively, as this is the ESB slot of the trilogy aka where everything is supposed to go in the toilet. There was a lot they could have done better and I’m still annoyed that Maz and Phasma both got pitifully tiny roles but were basically included despite the set up of the movie being extremely restrictive to much exploration and with probably the longest time limit they thought they could allow themselves and still sound like there were any tension in the chase… 

I think it’s definitely always worth exploring whether social issues are having an impact on the reception of a film, though, because it’s a way of addressing the issues in our society, which we *know* exist, and when a film is openly critical of our society, and then people are critical back at it, guessing there may be a nervous backlash from people it made uncomfortable for too-close-to-home reasons makes sense. The critique offered by Kylo Ren to edgy white masculinity is really interesting, and I think it’s probably not hard to imagine SOME people especially who fit the profile are reacting against him, or glorifying him anyway unironically while disliking large amounts of the rest of the movie. 

One of the points that article made as well was that other generic or bad films do much better with audience reaction - in fact some truly terrible films do really well as they’re marketed to a niche audience, and that audience gobbles them up and we get the inverse, of critically panned but audience ratings pretty high.

I mean, I’m assuming if you follow me you’re a Supernatural fan and so we’re all here to gobble up the melodramatic pretty boys :P

So, idk, I think in some ways the picking apart of the film and emphasising its flaws is happening in a strange social climate, where in some ways the discomfort about the film not catering with the most “easy” empathy of a white male main character & with flawed but interesting characters in the other roles particularly prone to being criticised in society for existing anyway and that the SW revival has already had one film threatened boycott over because of Finn being a black stormtrooper on his reveal, and I doubt that feeling has just magically gone away… There comes a point where I wonder how much is basically film review concern trolling when it comes to criticising his and Rose’s arc, or the film in general. 

And how much of the film’s real flaws, plotholes etc if they existed in an easier version of the film with all 4 Chrises in the major roles would take months or years to get properly dissected by the internet while it’s basically as soon as you go back online after the movie someone’s complaining about why Canto Bight even existed.

I mean my “Hm” was “this is interesting and I think it definitely could apply to the wider cultural reaction to the movies” while obviously on a personal level if people have certain standards for films (my dad hates basically *everything* so I don’t think his reaction to TFA was categorically racist or sexist, just that he would be inclined to think pretty much anything JJ Abrams makes is garbage and whoops I never should have naively made him watch the first episode of Fringe with me :P) then if any of these movies are things you can tell would have rubbed you up the wrong way anyway, e.g. you didn’t like the original Ghostbusters that much/have found it far cringey-er on adult rewatches etc then you are absolutely allowed to have a reaction to it on a personal level which is not a sign of the sickness of our society :P 

But I think even if you don’t like the new SW film, it’s worth putting aside your critiques of it for a moment to think about this article and the wider reaction - not to make you guilted into enjoying the film, but because it’s worth at least pondering the wider social issues the film’s already definitely caught up in since like, before TFA came out, so we can’t deny that there’s at least some portion of the audience, whether the loud but small group of assholes who utterly invisibly boycotted TFA, or the wider percentage of the population who’ll be consciously or unconsciously turned off by the cast and the power given to their characters in the story, and the possibly even wider percentage who may still struggle to empathise with female characters because Hollywood has so systematically underrepresented like, what can alternately be the literal largest demographic on the planet, and presented just plain old cis women as characters whose inner lives are valuable and decisions should be respected. 

I mean since I came out the movie I’ve been swinging back and forth on “should Holdo have just told Poe her plan or was the point that this man of a much lower station is getting all up in her business demanding to know and questioning her, and I assume that was intentional so I should agree with Holdo but would this have looked just as bad if a male admiral showed up doing the same thing and they accidentally undermine her by it being a bad decision in general, or is the point that if it had been a male admiral Poe would have shut up and not let an insurrection, but I mean it’s *Poe* and I love him and I totally understand and he was made out to be more sympathetic until *after* the twist so did they WANT us to be critical of Holdo or am I just falling into a trap of not giving female characters the same room to fuck up as male characters -” and that’s BEFORE I get onto the internet and read this debate for weeks, just my confusion about this arc and what it was saying and if it was meant to say one thing or the other or if it’s a bit of bad writing (but not something so bad it would ruin the film to the point of only 50% enthusiasm like Rotten Tomatoes is giving it - like, 93% or something :P) or if it’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to by making my brain cogs go and making me feel I need to write like, a dozen female admiralty into things to allow Holdo a cultural sisterhood of good bad and ugly admirals to be her own person in instead of the only female admiral to ever stick in my head like this :P So idk. 

Hm. Basically.