Obsessed with
Bechloe, Villaneve, Avorah, Wayhaught, Gretson… etc etc etc.
Nerdy queer girl who loves her wife, old shit, cynical humor, sarcasm,
and her cats. — TERFs can fuck RIGHT off of my blog.
Every Hacks post I start to make turns into a dissertation, so I’m going to throw just a handful of errant thoughts down so I feel like I’ve articulated something. (Caveat that I haven’t spent much time in the tags or in fandom spaces these last few weeks, so there’s a very good chance some of these observations/thoughts have been shared and discussed already!)
Spoilers and run-ons below:
This show loves a good parallel, and so do I. Here are a few of the less-obvious parallels that leapt out to me:
The way Jean played telling Ava about the cancer reminded me very, very strongly of how she played firing Ava in the season two finale. In both situations the two have a lighthearted moment of shared success, followed by Deborah looking away and visibly bracing herself before abruptly delivering news she knows Ava will be devastated by in a very clinical, business-like manner. That stood out to me upon first watch, and they’re really great scenes to watch side by side.
Not a parallel, but in the same scene, two lines really stood out to me: “I’ve done it all—it’s not going to get any better than this”, followed by Ava countering, “Well, yeah, it’s a high for your career.” Their deliveries were both perfect—Deborah was entirely earnest, grounded in the decision she’s making about her life based on having achieved career highs. Ava, of course, doesn’t give a shit about Deborah’s career in that moment, and Hannah delivered that line with a mix of hurt, exasperation, and disbelief that this is the ground upon which Deborah has made this decision. Taking all else aside (including the many other factors influencing Deborah’s decision not yet articulated), I feel like this moment went a long way towards establishing the dissonance between what was driving Deborah to this choice and how Ava perceived it.
It also sets the stage, of course, for Deborah’s pivot at the end from “I’ve done it all and it won’t get better” being all-encompassing vs. recognizing that there's a distinction between that being true for her career and being true for her, full stop. That's a pretty significant shift for someone whose identity has been her career for a very, very long time, and who, for the first time ever, doesn't have a professional achievement to hold onto or work towards.
Deborah identified entirely with her comedy, which was her work. She and Ava worked together; their work was comedy. Somewhere along the line, the lines blurred: for Deborah, her comedy was her identity, it was her work, but her work was also Ava, and her comedy was Ava, or at least Ava and comedy had become so enmeshed that they couldn't possibly be separated—
The untangling in the finale, then, really read to me as Deborah reckoning with a fundamental shift in how she identifies herself and her comedy. If she was her work but is no longer working, what does that make her and why is she still writing jokes? If comedy and Ava are so entwined to her that they can't be separated, what does that mean? What does any of this look like? And we get to see it! It's the two of them making each other laugh for the joy of it, no goal, no mountain to climb, for the first time ever. It's Deborah getting to be a girl spending time with her favorite person in the world and settling into the foreign perspective that she, her existence, her identity, are not synonymous to her career and legacy, the same way that her comedy, the time she spends laughing with Ava, is not work. Their time in Paris gave her the first chance she's ever had to exist outside of these parameters, and from that angle, her changing her mind and recognizing that there's an entire new landscape that may very well be better than anything that's come before makes so much sense to me.
(All to say, I really liked how those two lines were delivered lol)
As a side note, I love the messiness of Deborah saying “I’ve done it all—it’s not going to get any better than this” to the woman she met in her mid-to-late-60s while on cruise control, thinking she was on top and had done it all, only to have her entire life upended and realize dreams she didn’t even let herself dream all because Rachel Maddow's mechanic walked into her living room. GIRL. (But again, Deborah identifying entirely as her career and not quite able to envision what “more” and “better” could look like for her as a human being who loves her person, whose person loves her back, and for that to be enough—or even more.)
I love, love, love the thing this show does where Deborah does or says something out of anger and hurt and then brings it back in the most tender way possible. We have the double-whammy on the rooftop in the s2 finale where Deborah touches Ava’s cheek (the opposite of a slap is a stage direction that will live in my head forever) and repeats “You’re just like me” from earlier that season; this is one of my all time favorite moments in the show. (I feel like there was another example, but I’m blanking?)
All to say, I was destroyed by “You’re a big, brave girl.” For one thing, I’ve seen the original scene an embarrassing number of times, and my best friend and I say it all the time about everything from taking the compost out (which, fuck, I am remembering in real time that I have to do, and I will because I am a big brave girl!). But also, oh my god? It was so gentle and teasing and loving and more than two years after that initial moment in Ava's office, and aldskgjskgjs I adore it, I love it so much.
(I also have gone a little wild with it and am headcanoning that it’s become an inside joke between them! lbr it wouldn’t take much for Ava to admit how hot it was, and Deborah would 100% take advantage of that and tease her with it. I like to think it snowballed similarly to how it did in my house, but that Deborah is much more selective in when she uses this particular weapon. And the best part of this is that the alternative is that none of this happened and Deborah just remembers that moment two years later and knows that Ava will, too, and there’s no reason for that except that it was hot and charged and intense as hell.)
I have a lot of complicated thoughts about the pacing of this season—things I wish we’d seen more of, less of, and the value of/possible reasoning for what we did see vs. what and why we didn’t. That’s another post, and it skews towards being satisfied with and understanding most of the choices made in the finale, at least. That said, there were two major omissions that I’m genuinely frustrated and confused by: the fact that DJ isn’t mentioned even once in the context of Deborah’s illness and planned death, and that we didn’t get to see Ava tell Deborah about the new version of Who’s Making Dinner? based on their relationship.
Setting that frustration aside, though, all I could think during Ava’s pitch in 5x09 was the 3x09 fight: “It’s not about our relationship.” // “Don’t you get it? It will work better because of our relationship. What we make together is good because of it.” Given that JPL seem determined to give us a box set full of goodies (including deleted scenes…!), I’ll live in hope that somewhere out there is a scene to complete the parallel set of the 3x09 fight, Ava’s successful pitch, and Deborah’s reaction to it.
Deborah dancing in the club contrasted with Deborah dancing alone in Singapore—GOD this one gets me. I don’t know much about cinematography but the way these scenes were filmed were perfect. In Singapore, Deborah is all dolled up, on display at the top of a glass tower, completely alone, and it was filmed in a way that felt incredibly voyeuristic—we were the audience, we were watching her spiral in real time and come to that moment of realization of how alone and miserable she was. That scene was a fracture in the facade that she was maintaining despite no one being there.
In Paris, on the other hand, we see her through Ava’s eyes. She’s dressed in Ava’s clothes (including the jersey from Montecito 👀), giddy and happy and physical with Ava, more present in her body than we’ve maybe ever seen her. It’s the opposite of Singapore, where she was performing for no one—here, she’s not performing for anyone, but Ava is watching; this time, it’s Ava’s moment of realization. Just. Fucking perfect.
Moving away from more explicit parallels to general thoughts…
Speaking of Deborah being present in her body, I love the fact that it was a joke about her disordered eating that led to her changing her mind! Her disordered eating is all about control, and it was perfect that the small decision to let go of that control and enjoy the second croissant—why not, right?—set up the much bigger decision of not going through with the assisted dying process, which was, at its core, a decision to take complete and final control over her body rather than experience the uncontrollable effects of her illness.
I’m not a romcom connoisseur, but the train station chase that ended with an emotional proposal (of sorts) really checked off a lot of genre boxes, and I loved it. It was melodramatic and sweeping and an emotional rollercoaster and I can see why that shift in intensity in the finale may have been jarring, but goddamn it, things are shit and the melodramatic happy ending* landed exactly right for me.
*I do consider it a happy ending and a very satisfying one, per a post coming at some point!
I’ve spent five seasons admiring Jean’s commitment to virgin earlobes (I also don’t have pierced ears, and they hurt just thinking about the weight of those clip-ons), so that was really fun to see acknowledged in canon.
Bouncing back to episode nine now, but with a different lens: look, I’m not happy about Marty either. I thought they had a nice ending in 5x03, and they very easily could have written him into a position at The Diva for 5x10 without him having the role he did in 5x09 (which was extra frustrating given that there were other characters that would have made much more sense/been much more satisfying to see in that final scene—Marcus you deserved so much more!). I still don’t like it, and I still don’t think that Deborah sleeping with him made a lot of sense character-wise, but knowing now that a) Deborah was sick and at the very least considering assisted death at that point, and—more importantly, honestly—that b) Jean really believed that this season would involve a Deborah/Marty wedding and actively wanted that, I’m much more forgiving. I don’t know if JPL gave a little extra attention to that dynamic for Jean’s sake, but bless her, if it made her happy one way or another, I can live with it. (Jean is a delight and a joy and I love her, and she is so, so painfully straight—but not Straight™, which is an important distinction.)
WHEW, okay! This is a mess but at least I've corralled most of the strays.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
New Bechloe AU! Don't worry, nobody actually dies despite what the title says.
Beca is a late-night radio show host, and Chloe is an early-morning news host. When Beca impulsively plays an original song on the radio, Chloe is directed to connect with her to help both of their companies. Beca is nearly impossible to work with, with strict boundaries around her public appearances for reasons Chloe is too nervous to ask. But when the cameras and mics are off, the two discover a deeper connection.
Tbh germ theory DOES sound crazy. Like if you told a regency-era nobleman that tiny creatures lived on the surface of everything and THAT’S what causes consumption, they’d be like “ah, I see you are a lunatic. Would you reside in my hermitage? Rantings and ravings do so amuse my guests”
Yeah, actually, it would probably be pretty easy to explain germ theory to a Medieval person as tiny evil spirits that live on everything, but they can be purified by soap and water, or by alcohol, because that is why God has granted us those things. And because they can float in the air, if you cough or sneeze after they have infested you, that can cause them to infest others. And when you are sick, the angels God has deputized to defend the bodies of His beloved children are at war with the evil spirits, and, sadly, sometimes they lose, but the best way to help your angels win their battle is to rest, drink plenty (this would probably be small beer in this time period, not water, because the water was also infested), stay clean, and for the sake of God do not allow anyone to let your blood, for the angels need that blood in their war against the evil spirits. Bloodletting is good for some types of illnesses but not the kinds caused by the tiny evil spirits.
boiling as a sterilization measure is also easy to explain. water returns to the air when heated and it rises as steam back up to the floodgates of heaven; we know God created the world in seven days, He's not up there making more water every time it rains. it circulates. the returning of water to heaven also purifies the water of unclean and malign influences. you know wormy water from a muddy puddle will kill your kid. you know you wouldn't wade into a bog and have a slurp. water that remains in the low places of earth absorbs all that is unclean from our waste and it may also sponge up new diseases from hell, we're not totally sure about that one, but it seems likely. God set up the heavenly water cycle so that the earth's waters wouldn't totally fill up with gunk.
what does this have to do with boiling your surgical tools? well look, the boiling water releases bubbles of steam which carries the malign influences up to heaven. you boil a knife, you send all the miasmic particles off with the steam to heaven. if you rinse the knife off in a bucket the water isn't hot enough, the particles go into the water and then right back on to the knife. you gotta boil it to get the particles all the way away.
how can a tool or rag or a bed have miasmic particles on it when you can't smell them? humans have a lousy sense of smell. look at your dog on the hunt. are there no rabbits in the woods just because you can't smell them? we know that miasma is carried on the air, and is what makes stench so dangerous, and we know that humans can't smell worth a damn compared to dogs cats horses etc. a dog can smell if a rat died in a corner of the room last week. you can't. do you think licking the spot where the rat died is going to go well for you? luckily, what humans lack in snout we make up for in brains. we have extra brains where our sniffers should have been. God set that up for a reason.
and why does a rinse with wine spirits work? man, look how fast alcohol evaporates. my guess is that because wine contains a lot more vice than water, it evaporates a whole lot faster, in sort of an equal and opposite way that a rock falls faster than a feather. if you want the miasmic particles to get off there FAST, you dunk it in something that's going back to heaven at a gallop.
what's up with honey? it just preserves things against corruption. doesn't clean them off. honey doesn't evaporate at all. probably because bees don't sin. it's not good for ridding a tool of particles-- it's sticky-- but fine for preserving anything you don't want to go to heaven OR hell. this is why you wash the wound with wine spirits or purified water FIRST, to sluice the miasma out, then slap the honey on AFTER. and boil the damn bandage, too. you wouldn't put a rotten door in a sound doorframe and expect it to keep out bandits, would you? cmon.
Medieval people also already knew that putting things out in the sun helped to keep them clean (UV radiation killing bacteria). So everyone knows that after you use a butter churn, you rinse it out, give it a scrub, and set it out in the sun to dry, or else it will go sour and everything you make with it will go bad fast. Likewise with when you want to get sheets and clothes really clean and fresh, you boil them with lye soap and then lay them out in the sun to dry.
"I think that the place that they end, walking hand in hand — frankly, there's an introduction of a physical intimacy in the finale that does feel new to me. I think when Ava meets Deborah at the airport, and she puts her head on her shoulder, they've hugged, and they've, you know, pushed each other a little in jest… I think there was a real, genuinely new physical intimacy that was established throughout, they're really holding each other in this way that is new throughout, whether that's in the airport or in the Louvre, or in that last shot walking arm in arm. I do think something new happens in the finale." - Hannah Einbinder
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