(no subject)

[sapote]

Okay, first, I need to 100% clarify that I don't watch tv drama. I never saw the Sopranos, I haven't been within a thousand yards of Breaking Bad. I like my tv morally uncomplicated and aimed at tweens, and I'm honestly pretty fine with that - I tend to inject the nuance after the fact, via fandom. But it does leave me in kind of a bad place for analyzing tv drama, since I don't know the conventions of the genre.

And it's not like I'm going to be saying anything super novel if I point out that this is a really good show, since everyone's had about eight months to repeat that fact in most major media. But there were some parts that really resonated with me that I seem to want to talk about before I can change out of my pajamas and go rejoin the rest of humanity.

First, this isn't flocked so I'm gonna be super vague about the First Job Out of College, but there was a lot of familiar stuff in here for me. The relentless pressure to be a hardass extends pretty far, for one thing.

Second, like, I think, everyone, I got more and more done with Piper as the series went on, to the point where every time she started talking I wanted her to please just shut up and go away, and I think that's interesting because yes, she's a horrible yuppie stereotype (people say the author of the book is in her way much worse) but, you know. Insightfully so. The way she leverages her fiance to get in good with Healy, for example. The way she goes through the season convinced that the most important thing is that she makes sure that everyone knows she's a nice person, and if she just says enough nice things with her voice they will know that she's a Nice Lady and that will protect her from harm. She's not good - she doesn't have more of a sense of what that would look like than anyone else - but oh by god she is Nice.

And of course that really resonates with me, because the thing about her specific background is that no one is really gunning for you, I feel like - I mean, people will take advantage, and bad things happen, but she is starting with a good hand of cards - and she really can, in real life, explain her way out of pretty much everything that's ever happened. I mean, she was involved with an international drug cartel for years, even if she was only an accessory once, and she really doesn't expect anything to happen to her that's more than slightly sad as a result. It was really interesting how everyone did or didn't play Nice Person - for instance Susan the young cute prison guard does it just the same way Piper did with Healy at first.

Also, Fig was hilariously on-target, in my brief IRL experience. I kind of think it's a shame that most of the people from my First Job Out of School would never watch this show because it promotes sexual immorality and also because they're pissed off over Pornstache.

In 100% shallower news, I cannot believe they made an entire miniseries out of Laura Prepon looming over people and being menacing and sexually manipulative while also having a tender heart deep down. I say this as someone who at one point wrote 70 unposted k of really dubious Eric/Donna/Hyde. It is like second Christmas, damn.