#mtmcd

[trickster-archangel]

During my h50 fast-forward rewatch I couldn't help but stopping on this very scene, because I'm sure the subtext is powerful here. It's all about subtext. It actually gives you the chills to read, now, comments written on fanfics dealing with this specific episode, because so many of us were damn sure Steve was foreshadowing his death because of radiation poisoning (which, honestly? Would've made sense, so damn sense, considering the framing of this scene. And it wouldn't have left such a HUGE plotline open. Not that I want Steve dead at the end of s10, but you know....consistency...).

Anyway I tried to read this scene in a different light, knowing that Steve already knew he was thinking about taking a leave, going away from Hawai’i, finding himself, and he didn’t know how to tell Danny. Danny who already KNEW something was wrong, something was afoot, and Steve was definitely fucked up.

Don't focus on Steve, here, nor on his words — because now it's clear, so damn clear and painfully obvious he's not talking about sunsets: you get sunsets everywhere (even in Montana, while your father-figure is dying in your arms...and fuck you all if now sunsets will always be a cliche metaphor for death), so it's not really like you'll miss these specific Hawaiian sunsets. The only sun, the only sunshine he's ever had in his life is Danny. His Danno. So the only thing he'll miss, truly miss, while he searches for answers around the globe, will be his Danno. And that’s why he's so ready to agree when Danny tells him to visit New Jersey. He's basically telling Danny that even if he's the constant in his life, he's never taken him for granted, and that he's the thing he'll miss the most.

No. I'm not focusing on the obvious, here.

I'm seeing only this: Danny's face in the third gif. That's not a relaxed, tired, maybe annoyed-at-the-impromptu-feelings-dumping face you'd expect. He's just told Steve he's there for him, whatever he needs to say or talk about. Dammit, he's asked Steve to confess what's tormenting him!

No. Look at the strained lines around his eyes. Look at his furrowed brow. Look at his grimace, barely restrained.

Don't forget Danny's a detective. A hell of a good detective. By those seemingly innocent words alone, he's already understood Steve is going away. Maybe he only feels it in his guts — but he knows he's going to lose Steve. And that’s exactly why, in answer to Steve's heartfelt, gloomy words, all Danny can do is draw from his most reliable coping mechanism: joke. He jokes about squirrels and dinner. Because he doesn't known, literally has no clues, how to cope with the idea that his main dude is leaving him.

Danny knew Rachel was going to divorce him the day they married. He knows.

[sniper130675]

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[trickster-archangel]

Random thoughts about Hawaii Five-0 rewatch: part 3/?

Last random thought for a while, because I need to find the time to skip between s6-s10 DVDs.

Thought #4: dude....love triangles only apply to romantically and sexually involved people, so no, don't worry, we won't "call it bromance", or: The Prom Date parallel, or: The Real Jersey Slip.

This one is really just on my mind, but since I was skipping between contents just to make sure everything was (probably) working (Danny's negativity is powerful in me), I happened to land onto two specific bits of dialogue which made me bitter-laugh so madly.

The incriminated dialogues are found in the s4 Shorelines (I think), and in the commentary (courtesy of Lenkov, O'Loughlin, and Park) for 3x17 aka the Pro Bowl date episode.

I'm reasoning backwards, because what the writers were saying, extensively, about the Billy storyline, was that they wanted to show a different side of McGarrett: he's sure of himself, self-confident, cocky even, when coming to his job and skills....but what about his feelings and personal life? He does have a vulnerable, doubtful side, one which makes him feel stuttering when coming to relationships. He trusts Catherine (ouch), and Billy too because they used to be battlefield brothers. But does he? So they explored this jealous side of him, one he's not proud of and which he desperately tries to stifle, deny, push down and downplay, because admitting it would mean feeling weak.

Also, Billy's death would've put Catherine in a place where she didn't have purpose in life anymore, where she felt guilty for something she was trained to prevent, bringing her to seek Steve's presence as a friend too (!!!!) to have a shoulder to cry onto.

This is absolute perfect, and I do appreciate the effort and the general masterplan...even if as usual, character-study is not the main interest for an older audience thus it was obviously shallow and just hinted at, in reality....and also they shamefully killed Billy after a few episodes instead of exploring this "love triangle" in depth.

That's it. That's the exact idiom they used for the Billy/Catherine arc. Love triangle. Which is absolutely the correct term for the situation. Let's pack it for later, and let's move to the 3x17 commentary.

What's so funny to me, is that when the (in)famous "Cath gets ditched because Steve is going with Danny" scene comes on screen, you hear PL almost absentmindedly perking up and laughing, saying something like "Oh, and here we are at the classic love triangle drama!".....then suddenly shuts up because he gets aware of what he just said.

At this point things get frenzy, they laugh, Grace cheers, and someone (PL? Alex?) hurries to add "C'mon Steve, don't be that man who ditches his girlfriend to go out with his best friend!", to save the situation.

Only problem is, we hear Alex (I think it’s his voice this time), saying "It's exactly like one of those awkward moments when you're asked for prom, but you turn down the person because you already have a date".

And we really remember when that other "prom date moment" was, right?

I really can't understand why they chose to ditch all this potential they were all clearly aware of, just for heteronormativity sake. A man and a woman can be platonic best friends. Two men can be completely romantically committed to each other. I really can't see what the problem is.

[trickster-archangel]

Random thoughts about Hawaii Five-0 rewatch: part 2/?

Still trying to make sense, in sparse order, of some things I noticed and that made me question the mental stability of whoever decided determined plot points...

Thought #3: missed chance to be a fucking adult, evolved human being and not a caveman about divorced couples, or: if you had started with the intention of showing how Danny and Rachel could rebuild affection and understanding, why fucking slaughter her character that way?!?!

At the end of s1, I suppose it's in the Shorelines extra? anyway, the authors talk extensively about how it was their endgame since the pilot to portray the subtle change and the evolution of the relationship between Danny and Rachel, meaning: they wanted to show how two people, who once loved each other enough to decide to share a lifetime together, had fallen apart and started hating each other just as much because that's what happens in life, but in the end, slowly, thanks to life's twists and turns, they managed to find back the chemistry, the trust, the support, the love they had lost, creating a new kind of bond.

~~~~~~follows under the cut~~~~~~

Which....cool, really. It's fantastic. I obviously don't like the idea of no-mcdanno, but in a way I can really appreciate the intention of portraying something clearly fictional but way better, healthier and more hopeful than what happens in reality like, 70% of the times. My parents would immediately slaughter each other even after more than 30 years after the divorce. I have friends and ex colleagues who are just the same and cannot even be decent enough not to shit over each other in front of their children, making them part of their feud. In Italy, every three days a woman is murdered by her husband, ex husband, fiancee, partner, ex partner. The other 30% is barely civil enough to pretend NOT TO want to murder the other ex spouse.

So, cool. Good intention, I appreciated it, even if I don't agree with Danny sleeping with his ex wife behind her rightful husband's back.

Then 2x01 happened and ok, everything between them fell apart. Probably Danny didn't really believe the baby was Stan's, but it didn't matter because in the end he trusted Rachel and that was enough. He helped her deliver Charlie. He was a good friend. They could've kept this storyline, show how ex spouses can become civil and affectionate again, share a different love, explore the nuances of an extended family. Everything could've been normal and healthy.

So what the fuck happened with the whole "Stan wants to move to Vegas" and then "Rachel always knew Charlie was Danny's but had decided to keep him in the dark because she wanted to decide for everyone"?!?

Ready? The answer comes, plain and simple, in the following seasons' Shorelines commentaries.

They wanted to put Danny through an emotional grinder and imagine how he'd react, but most of all, they wanted to throw a curveball (multiple curveballs including Steve's storyline) at the audience, to hook them, shock them, and make sure they'd be unable not to be there for the next season to see what will happen.

That's it. That's the great mastermind masterplan.

Cheap shocking for the sake of audience ratings.

Ok, I get that after all the mess Rachel did, she probably didn't get much of a saying in Stan's relocation purpose...even if she could've been the friend Danny had been, and left Grace with him, moving only with Charlie and maybe getting Grace for school breaks. Anyway, that's a normal and believable kind of shock/curveball.

But the whole "Charlie’s paternity clusterfuck"?? I mean, it's not even realistically believable! In my 44 years, I've witnessed THIS EXACT SITUATION TWICE!! And in both cases, first thing the cheated husband did, apart from asking immediately for a divorce, was asking for a paternity test! That's what normal, real people do, if they KNOW their wife had an affair and suspiciously GETS PREGNANT immediately after!!

Unless you're a complete idiot who has no experience whatsoever of how the real world works, there's only one explanation for this mess: that you wanted us to imply that Rachel didn't even tell Stan about the cheating, that she simply told him, generically, that their marriage wasn't working anymore and she wanted to go back home, and made him believe that the baby had been conceived during their last-effort trip before Danny was poisoned....right after she'd made sure she'd get pregnant with Danny's kid to trap him with guilt AND need, and then lied to both men. FOR YEARS.

I call this clusterfuck one name only: character's assassination.

There were so many ways, even after s2 and s3 events had happened, they could've brought that shocking curveball forward, because the path they chose only managed to depict Rachel as a mean, cheating, liar bitch who managed to play both men. It's horrible, and chauvinist, and toxic.

She could've been genuinely sure Charlie was Stan's, and only with the disease outbreak and the test both Rachel and Stan had learnt about the truth. Stan could've kicked her out and Danny could've swept in like a real hero to help a friend who once was his love, or maybe they could've explored the difficulties of rebuilding a family.

More simply, Charlie could've been genuinely Stan's but Stan could've given her an ultimatum about Vegas and they could've divorced because Rachel couldn't bear the situation anymore, and made Stan go through what Danny had suffered with the move to Hawai'i.

Charlie could've been Danny's, and she could've decided to come clean with both instead of the whole shared custody arc (this situation, of course, implies that they could've been so far-sighted to imagine a several-seasons arc for Danny and Rachel, instead of improvising for the sake of shock).

Stan could've died, and Danny could've found himself suddenly in charge not only of his daughter and ex wife, but also acting as a father figure for a little kid who wasn't his, but who was his daughter's little brother thus deserving love and protection, making his genuine amazing humanity shine.

These are just some things I'm coming up with, right now, while I'm working and not even plotting, and avoiding any hypothesis implying both Stan's and Rachel's timely death to allow Danny the troubling experience of being a single father of two kids, maybe suddenly discovering that Charlie is his.

There were so many interesting nuances they could've explored, to make sure that they could've followed their initial masterplan about rebuilding a human bond between Danny and Rachel, AND granted them enough shock and emotional distress to hook the audience to the following seasons. Kinda like what they did, more respectfully, with the reveal of Harry's paternity.

They simply chose the cheapest route: harpy, bitch, whore ex wife cheats on both husbands and ruins everyone's life.

Good job.

[trickster-archangel]

Tonight they broadcasted episode 5x07.

Huh. Been a while since I last watched it.

I'm not here to state the obvious, since there are better meta around here. I'm not even entertaining the thought of why Steve chose not to redeem Kamekona or Jerry.

No. It's another idea that's obsessing me since the first minutes of the episode (as always, I'm ignoring the only thing in canon that I allow myself to ignore, i.e. P*L existence. Things go like this bc reasons, not surely their writing).

The thing is, since when I remember existing, I've always been a lucid dreamer, meaning I'm almost always aware of being asleep and dreaming, and most of the times I'm also able to shift, change and control what happens inside the dreams, wake up at command if things get horrible, or in case they're good or interesting (very rare eventuality) and I'm suddenly awakened, I can go back and resume the dreaming from where it stopped.

See my point? I suddenly understood that, drugs or not, there was no way Steve could've been awakened, tortured, drugged, and then start dreaming/hallucinating exactly from the moment he had stopped, keeping the story continuity. He was subconsciously steering the dream. He had some sort of control over it, despite his conditions.

Not just this. He was given drugs to tell the truth...so what I implied, is that Steve was specifically imagining something he believed so strongly inside his head, that his subconscious had subverted reality and translated it into this new one.

Which means....how many times Steve had already daydreamed about this alternate reality? How many times had he indulged in these sort of reverie, sitting alone on his chair at night, on the sand, listening just to the ocean waves? How long had he refined this fantasy of his, carving details and sceneries, choosing words and actions, settings, characters? How many times had this alternate universe he wanted so desperately to be reality, come visiting him in his dreams, and how many times had he changed some subtle detail until his story and Danny's were perfectly never-endingly happy, and yer together?

Steve has spent his whole fucking life being the savior, the protector, the defender, the self-sacrificing lamb. Steve has always been the one never allowed to fail, except for Freddie, and his dad. He couldn’t save Freddie, because it was his oen fault and his own alone, and nobody could've prevented Freddie's death except Steve, and Steve failed.

Not his dad. Listen, in this universe he could've saved Victor's brother, and so also his dad. But Steve is fucking tired of saving everyone and everything and never fucking up, so in this universe he fucked up too. It wasn’t Steve changing fate: it was Danny. Danny is Steve’s valorous knight in shining armour. Danny is Steve’s savior, Steve’s protector, Steve’s defender. Danny's the one saving his father, capturing Hesse, gaining the intel from him with questionable methods thus sparing Steve from always staining his hands, finding Wo Fat.

Danny here has Steve's back in many ways, much more than usual. Danny saves Steve from falling deeper into the pit he's nevertheless fsllen after his father death. Danny's changed Steve’s fate, even more than in reality: not for nothing, Steve’s and Danny's scene drinking beer on the beach at the end of the day is replaced with Steve and John drinking the same beers in the same spot at the same hour. Danny's become Steve’s father figure after John's death, but in a universe where John was saved in time, it's been Danny, Steve’s hero, the father who's replaced his own, saving John....not Steve.

Of course Danny is happy, of course he's chosen Ohau over Jersey (because Steve still fears Danny will flee away), of course he's married with an adored Rachel (because Steve is still heartbroken after Danny's hook-up with her after the sarin, and of course he cannot believe he could ever beat her for Danny's heart), of course Danny drives Steve around (because Steve unconsciously would love so damn hard to let Danny take control and chase every worry away), of course it's Danny asking Steve to stay and work with him.

And so on. Every little detail is hurting even more if you think that maybe Steve was just reliving a fantasy he'd honed and polished for years, night after night, daydream after daydream, waiting for his brave knight to barge in and save him from himself and his fate.

I'm not ok.

[trickster-archangel]

I was rewatching 4x01, and holy shit.

I had forgot the absolute disgust, I'd say the complete and mortal offense you can read on Steve's face when Danny more or less implies that he should, maybe, dunno, have told Gabby that he loved her (Danny, my dude, just a tip: I love you but you're an idiot. If you have to think about saying or not saying "love you" to your girlfriend you've been dating for one year, with whom you have, your words, something nice - wow, don't squander, isn't nice a bit too strong of a word??? - then you're doing it wrong, all wrong, epically wrong, and you better leave her and DON'T DATE ANY OTHER BREAST-EQUIPPED HUMAN because you're clearly dating all the wrong people since you refuse to say the word).

YoU wAnT tO tElL hEr ThAt YoU lOvE hEr?!?!1!1?1!

Steve, my dude, that's not what a supportive best bro should ask his best friend. That's a petty, peeved, jealous, annoyed, pissed reaction from someone who's painted green. Emerald green. Camouflage green. Bottle green. All the greens of the greenery.

Yes, sure, he backpedals by adding that he should say it only if he means it...which is the kind of manly bullshit that he thinks will make him look all wise and broody. Too bad, again, that Danny lasercuts through his bullshit (drunken confessions together on the lanai till dawn? sulky Catherine one afternoon at Kame's truck trading secrets about their favourite Neanderthal?) and snarkily calls him out on the fact that he, Steven McGarrett, definitely never told someone that he loved them so he cannot speak from experience.

Truth is, Steve doesn't want Danny to tell Gabby those three words. He doesn't want to her him say it, because if he says it then it's real, and if it's real then it's Rachel all back again because he fucking left a voicemail to Rachel, whom he had always sworn he hated and resented and with whom he had told Steve it was over, also the respect let alone the love (and he had lied to Steve, it was the only time but hell will freeze before Steve forgets that Danny couldn't tell him about Rachel like he's telling him about Gabby), and in the voicemail he said that he loved her, and if he loves Gabby then he's lost Danny again.

And then he proceeds to go save Catherine like his life depended on it. Sure, he's done the same shit to save Chin too, he almost died to help Jenna, and he'd do exactly the same for everyone in his team. And she's not his girlfriend anyway, right? Both Steve and Catherine agree on this, at least. She's team.

But Steve says I cannot lose her too. And sure, he's thinking about his father. But it does sound a little strange that he immediately feels the need to reaffirm Catherine's presence in his life, and her necessity, just when Danny tells him he should probably, dunno, maybe, tell Gabby that he loves her (as a treat, because she makes him happy.....I have no words).

When he found Danny with Rachel and understood that he probably would've left Hawai'i (and Steve) right away, his reaction was to bust his whole life and career and break into the governor's house. He had nothing left to lose anymore.

When he heard that voicemail and knew, just knew, that he could never compete with Rachel, his immediate reaction was to bring Cath to the charity event as his plus one. An event where only the members of Five-0 were present, with no plus one. No Malia, no Gabby (although abroad, yes) nor Grace, no Fong. No plus one. But Steve felt the need to reaffirm his grasp on Catherine exactly when he felt it slip away from Danny for good. Going away with her for his scheduled training. To mark his territory and make sure, to himself mainly, that at least he had Cath.

I cannot lose her too can be easily disguised as shock for another one of his people being taken away to punish him, but it also does sound, more subtly, probably unconsciously, as a knee-jerk reaction to having lost Danny, once again.