H50: apparently I have ~feeeeelings

[ratherastory]

Gah.

Cliffhanger.

*brandishes fist impotently at H50 writers*

DEAR H50 WHY DO YOU DO THESE THINGS TO ME?!?

After a fun, intense season in which not too much emphasis was placed on realism and all sorts of emphasis was placed on the characters and their strong personal moral codes and the strength of their relationships, the finale threw me for a loop.

Let me start with the good.

1- A whole bunch of fun Steve/Danny moments. I predict LOTS of fanfic to explain the egg thing.

2- I really like Jenna. I hope they keep her around.

3- The plot twist wrt to the Governor was good. I have mixed feelings about it, which I will explain in the other section. But it's a legitimate plot twist and I am okay with it overall.

4- The action was well-scripted, the pacing was tight and suspenseful. I bounced a lot in anxiety throughout, so that's a good sign.

5- I have not lost faith in Chin, contrary to what most people seem to have decided. I think he's making the best of a bad situation and is putting himself in the best position he can find in order to help out the people who stood by him all year.


Now, onto the stuff I didn't like.

1- Danny/Rachel. WTF? Danny has up until now been the moral core of the show. He's a family man first and foremost, always has been. There is NO WAY that I can buy him sleeping with Rachel when she is still married to another man.

Now, Peter Lenkov says that Rachel & Stan's marriage has been over for a long time, and that makes it okay somehow. *BUZZER* WRONG! They are still married, and as lately as last episode Stan was still trying to save the marriage. You know what that makes Danny/Rachel? ADULTERY.

It's so horrifically out of character for Danny I don't even know where to begin. Also? Danny is still a cop. All the problems that existed in their previous marriage are STILL THERE.

But now there's a baby, and Danny being the man that he is, will step up. This leaves us with few choices. Either they fridge Rachel (and God, would I hate that!), or Rachel decides she doesn't want to be with Danny after all, or else Danny goes even further OOC, acts like a total douchebag and doesn't get back together with her.

Gaaaaaah!


2- The plot twist.

Oh, Show, WHY didn't you start setting this up properly five to eight episodes ago? WHYYYYYY? I love this plot twist, I do, I do. But you put in VERY little groundwork and thus ruined your credibility. I can count on the fingers of one hand and still have some left over the hints you dropped which weren't hints at all.

As a result, the whole damn episode felt rushed and forced and OOC for everyone involved.

3- I LIKED THE GOVERNOR! I am sad that she wasn't being blackmailed/coerced into all this. I love the actress, loved that there was a really strong female role in a position of power in the show. I am sorry to see her go.

4- Wo Fat. Dude, really? I liked him better when he was behind the scenes pulling strings. Having him there to zap Steve (Who never heard him coming? Really? Super SEAL?) and then use his gun to kill the governor was just... yeah. Whatever. Not good scripting. It was a surprise, but not really all that believable.

5- Danny leaving Rachel and Gracie at the airport like that. NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS. Again, with the OOC. Danny adores his daughter, he would have at least called to say he couldn't make it.


SHOW, WHERE DID ALL THE EMPHASIS ON LOYALTY GO? WHEEEERE?

Comments

[linerlover.livejournal.com]

I think you read my mind.
Especially on the Danny/Rachel and the airport thing. :/

P. S. Yo. I'm a lurker. Hence no comments before now. This episode just annoyed me too much to stay lurky. xD

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

Hello lurker! *waves cheerfully*

Glad to have you aboard! :)

Bah. This episode should have been awesome, and instead the writers clearly decided they were all way too clever for us. Sheesh.

[linerlover.livejournal.com]

Bah indeed.

You know, I really hate cliffies. Between H50, Castle, Supernatural and DW, I'm gonna go insane. :/

*waves back* :D

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

At least DW is still playing, right? But I know what you mean. Eesh.

[sanguine2.livejournal.com]

yep you got feelings -
and they're completely RIGHT!

I'm feeling too bleh to write anything about last night's disaster so thanks for peeking in my head and writing it all down for me - he he he

funny thing.... I feel a little better now :)

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

Excellent, I'm glad to have helped!

I don't think last night was a disaster, but it was a HUGE left turn for what the show has been up until now. I mean, WHAT? 23 episodes of one thing, and then the finale was like watching a different show with similar characters.

[sanguine2.livejournal.com]

eggs-actly!

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

Gah. I have way too many feelings about this. It makes me wish I had the attention span to write a proper meta about this. Family and Ohana, aka Danny and the Problem of Family Loyalty.

[zortified.livejournal.com]

I'm both encouraged and saddened that people are most upset with this episode because it's badly written, not because of the actual content. Er, that is, I think a lot of people would have been willing to see Danny and Rachel think they wanted to get back together as long as the storyline had ben well-written. etc.

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

Gah. I could have forgiven them MOUNTAINS of bad writing (the show is in its infancy, finales are hard, whatever) if it weren't for the infidelity subplot.

INFIDELITY IS NOT COOL, SHOW!

The worst part is that neither Danny nor Rachel appear to understand that what they are doing is wrong-wrong-wrong. If they really do love each other and want to make it work, then they need to start out by NOT HAVING RACHEL CHEAT ON STAN.

Stan is a stand-up guy, and I feel bad for him now. I am really, really saddened that Danny has been written this way, because he was SO the moral backbone of the show before this. :/

[zortified.livejournal.com]

I have finished eating my fried chicken so now I can converse with both hands. ;-)

The sad (for me) thing is - it would have been a really cool subplot to have Danny get back together with Rachel, because the whole year it's been obvious that it's something he thinks he wants. (I happen to think it would not work out, and they would break up again and it would be even worse. But I can totally buy Danny as being convinced that he would drop everything in a heartbeat to have his daughter and Rachel back as his family.

But not by becoming an adulterer, I agree with you. If I had any confidence that the show's writers were actually going to do something like say "Turns out Danny and Rachel are poly, and Stan knew this going in, and really it's going to be Steve/Danny/Rachel (Catherine) as one big happy but loud family" then I would be all for it. But I seriously doubt the show is going to Go There.

But - aside from wanting Steve and Danny to be Happy and Gay together, I think that what makes the most sense for Danny is "whatever keeps my daughter in my life." And getting back together with Grace's mom would be the best way to do that, despite the way Rachel treated him after the divorce.

The bottom line for me is that I don't think Danny and Rachel will be happy, married. If she left him after ten years - I don't think she's going to be happy going back. But I think she might have fallen into a marriage with Stan more quickly than she ought to have and mistook financial security and stability for the basis of a good marriage. (Well, if those are what you want, then they are a good basis for marriage. But I think Rachel wants more than that.)

I find myself wishing that we could have one good writer give us the "real" version of the season, that doesn't have to take into account network censors and time constraints and special effects budgets and actors needing sleep and directors and producers going "no, let's do this! It's shiny!" and companies saying "Mention our product here." But, golly, that almost sounds like fanfic. ;-)

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

See, I'm right there with you. I could even have bought the Danny-goes-back-to-Rachel plot if the writers had taken one minute of screen time earlier to have Rachel say: "I am leaving Stan and he already knows it. I'm filing for divorce."

I just hate infidelity and all fiction that makes it out to be a good thing.

(Show is *definitely* never going to go poly. Not on a major network.)

[jesseofthenorth.livejournal.com]

Pretty much all admittedly limited problems with this episode stem from the Danny/Rachel sub-plot.
It was clunky as hell and badly presented and frankly the whole idea of a guy who until this point has been all about personal integrity is sleeping with a married woman is morally repugnant. Not to mention the fact that right up until this episode aired the one thing we knew best about Danny was that he would always do what was best for Grace. Surely they are not to trying to sell that what's best for Grace is see that both of her parents are adulterers and that its OK to just run away when life gets complicated?
Gah
Some one should maybe have pointed out to Lenkov that huge characters shifts are not that much of a turn after 23 fracking episodes.

That being said I actually liked this ep, plot twist included. I liked the gov but i am totally cool with her being cahoots with the bad guys. Very dramatic. Badly written .... but still impactful.
Looking forward to the fall already so i guess they got what they wanted even while they were pissing me off.

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

Yup, this. Thoroughly enjoyed everything except the terrible, terrible subplot. Bad characterization, bad writing, bad everything, but it was the subplot that undermined everything else. The rest of the story still stands, and so I will keep watching in the hopes that they don't resolve it in a way that makes me want to tear out my hair.

[harrigan.livejournal.com]

SO much in agreement here! All season long I've been enjoying the show even when the plots strain credibility because *the characters*! Were awesome! All of them! Especially in relation to each other!

And now I feel like they broke the one thing that they were doing right!

I was so unprepared for Danny to be sleeping with Rachel that when she said she was pregnant, I actually [facepalm] thought for a minute it was Stan's and that she would end up going back to Stan because it's his kid, and so she was going to try again to make the marriage work. Doh!

Coming up a close second to the WTF of the adultery angle, what's with the two mature, capable, smart people ending up "oops, accidentally pregnant"!?!?

Not to mention, Rachel and Grace have to leave town within 24 hours? Because....? Why, exactly? (Character reason, not writers-wanna-end-with-an-angsty-cliffhanger-moment-for-everyone reason...)

I'm still shaking my head over this.

ETA: I do get that people are human - they're flawed. We're flawed. Anyone who is an SPN fan probably gets that characters can make mistakes and be forgiven/seek redemption. But it's really hard to accept the flaws when innocent kids are going to pay the price. And the writing - up until 1.23 there was nothing suggesting the characters were capable of making this kind of bad choice! And it's not like there wasn't enough else going on the episode that they needed this to get our attention or something! And I suspect the writers don't even think this was a mistake by Danny and Rachel!

[trinaest.livejournal.com]

I am pretty much in total agreement with you (except I think they had to have Wo Fat show up and do *something* himself in the final episode, so whatever). But, most especially, this:

Danny has up until now been the moral core of the show. He's a family man first and foremost, always has been. There is NO WAY that I can buy him sleeping with Rachel when she is still married to another man.

I was literally cringing during the first Danny/Rachel scene. Just ugh. I am so sad about this, I can't even.

With the proper setup, I could have bought them trying to get back together (and failing at it spectacularly), as you and zortified discussed. But like this? It just cheapens Danny's entire character.

The best thing about this show was the characters. It's what I keep telling people who aren't watching it, "The plots can be silly, but the characters are awesome." I am really worried about what they've done to these characters I love. :(

[asilia.livejournal.com]

The Danny/Rachel thing was just a huge WTF??? And the not very surprising pregnancy plot twist? Urgh That was just lame. And as you said, Danny would never just leave Rachel and his daughter at the airport like that, he'd at least call!!!

I hope Chin will come around because I love his character... just changing sides like that also seemed a little OOC to me, for a man as loyal as Chin.