#ggconcrit

[hypermania]

So how are we feeling about that brio angst?

well. i do love angst. the angstier the better. but to be perfectly honest i did not enjoy that episode at all. it didn’t feel like angst to me. it felt like a non-sensical destruction of 4x06 and 4x07. i don’t understand what the point of putting so much emphasis on the scene of beth making a choice outside of the bank was if she didn’t actually choose anything?? i know we didn’t see her actually make a choice but the implication was that she did. 

last night i was telling someone that my issue with what happened in this episode is similar to what happened in 2x13. beth’s reactions (shooting rio/turning rio over to the secret service) to rio’s actions (kidnapping beth/threatening her family and kids) make sense to me but rio’s actions make no sense at all! it’s bad writing! his actions come out of nowhere. and it makes him look like a freaking lunatic (and consequently beth like a callous b*tch who doesn’t care about him at all).

but with 2x13 i feel like they did a LOT to show how much it affected beth. she came home and broke down immediately and then season 3 opened with her so very clearly struggling with what she did, and she continued to struggle with that. then, we watched for the rest of the season, and even into season 4, as they struggled to get back on to some sort of even footing, and while i did not enjoy the execution of the hitman plot, i do feel like it accomplished that goal. beth and rio were equal threats to each other, both personally and professionally. they were in a good place to move forward with a new dynamic.

and then 4x06 and 4x07 happened and they were so good?? rio finally let beth in a little bit! beth was feeling guilty! they were revisiting their feelings for each other! they were feeling protective of each other! they were finally fucking honest with each other! it was good! it was so good! we were getting somewhere!

and then 4x08 came and was like FUCK YOU NONE OF THAT HAPPENED! and i just?? why? what was the point of doing any of that??

see, the thing is that i don’t think rio would actually physically harm any of beth’s family apart from dean (and maybe stan i guess) so those threats fall flat AND they come out of nowhere. beth and rio are supposed to be on the same side now. rio keeps asking beth to choose him but he doesn’t give her any reason to?? it makes no damn sense (and it doesn’t even compel me!). he doesn’t say “this is what WE’RE gonna do” or “here’s the plan” or “here’s how we’re gonna get out of this.” he tells her to choose him and then hangs her out to dry completely. choosing him seems to mean fucking herself over and that makes no sense!!! why on earth would she choose that?? like at this point it doesn’t even feel like she’s betraying him because he keeps telling her to pick him and then giving her zero reason to do that or even a way to do that. he says pick me. she supposedly does. and then he threatens her livelihood and her family but doesn’t give her any alternative. it makes NO SENSE!! this isn’t season 1 where he’s saying if you want to do crime, you have to actually DO the crime (which was fair! he was right! that struggle made sense!). now he’s just saying “yeah um you should... do... something...” but like WHAT IS THAT SOMETHING SUPPOSED TO BE??? tell her what to do that isn’t screwing herself and her family over and she’ll do it???? I AM PULLING MY HAIR OUT IN FRUSTRATION OVER THIS!! and i’m not actually holding this against rio. i think this is just terrible writing meant to continue to cause conflict but it’s not working because the conflict makes no sense anymore. she chose crime! she committed to it! but somehow it’s the same conflict over and over and over again. it’s stagnant. the only growth we see is that beth is a little less conflicted about screwing him over, and she holds her chin high this time, which, okay fine. if that’s the direction they want to take the show, fine! but then actually take it that way! don’t have rio there waiting for her like “oh my beautiful crime princess now we can rule the world... together!” WHAT??? 

that’s not angst. it’s just stupid. and it’s hella frustrating because i feel like it could’ve been very easily fixed with a few minor adjustments like a reveal at the end that beth was in on it from the beginning. or that she chose him and they made a plan to do something but somehow the secret service were one step ahead and they cornered her in a way that made it so that she really did have no choice. anything but this dumb situation where he just expects her to sacrifice everything for him with nothing in return and then STILL comes crawling back to her after she “betrays” him again. i hate it! i hate it! i hate it!

somewhat related: i’m also having a really hard time with their legal logic this season in a way that is disruptive for me. was it realistic before this season? no. but i could follow the magical tv logic. but now? i don’t know what’s going on! if dean pled guilty, what the fuck would there be a trial for?? he would be sentenced and that would be that. there would be no getting out on bail. why the fuck did they say he pled guilty instead of confessed?!? that’s such a dumb mistake! and it left me confused for several episodes!

and how in the great big dandy fuck does a city councilman have ANY SWAY WHATSOEVER over a federal investigation involving the secret service?? and what do the secret service want with rio anyway? the girls were the ones printing AND laundering the cash. rio’s gang affiliations or what-the-fuck-ever don’t matter!!

AND once they decided he did matter, i thought the whole point was to find out where the money goes?? so how does him sitting on a picnic bench and opening a box of fake cash (not even taking it and getting in his car!) give the secret service anything??? what was the point of spending several episodes trying to get beth to get more information about his operation if all it was gonna take was him looking like he was going to accept that money?? WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON ITS SO FRUSTRATING NOTHING MAKES SENSE.

okay. i think i’m done ranting. and since we here at hypermania dot tumblr dot gov value positivity i would just like to say that i very much enjoyed annie’s little nugget of knowledge about occam’s razor. she’s a gem and we’re so happy to have her here.

[hypermania]

like the implication of the first two seasons was that annie effectively put her life on hold to raise ben (while gregg kind of got to continue becoming a person) and that annie was overly attached to ben because he was, for all intents and purposes, her entire world. so, when the show started, her struggle was two-fold:

1. ben was reaching an age where annie was no longer able to provide ben with the level/type of care that would be best for him (thus gregg suing her for custody). but that implies that before that, she was. she was the best caregiver for him. 

2. ben was reaching an age where he was starting to need (and eventually want) some independence. so annie started to lose her entire sense of purpose and was sort of floundering because she didn’t know what to do without him. 

and we’ve been continuing to watch that struggle play out, mainly through her relationships with men. and that all makes sense! i get it (even if i don’t always like the way they do it)! but they don’t need to retroactively make annie bad at everything to get that point across. 

i... obviously feel very strongly about this haha

[hypermania]

So Annie doesn't know how to take care of a baby. Sure Jan.

i’m gonna be honest: i can’t take it seriously. there is no way beth raised ben. they have NO relationship now and i’m not sure ben even knows dean exists. if they want me to believe that happened, they’ve gotta show me the evidence.

it also implies that annie should’ve graduated high school... 

and even if i could suspend my disbelief for those issues (and i can, i can do the mental gymnastics and make the necessary connections), annie’s level of incompetency was that of someone who has never even seen a baby before, let alone had one. like. it’s too much.

i get that she’s irresponsible and reckless and makes bad decisions but come on. they’re just making her a joke at this point. there used to be some nuance to it and it’s been severely lacking as of late. 

[hypermania]

remember when annie slept with Finn Delinquent and it turned out he had a wife and he threw away the receipt the girls very much needed? and it turned into this big whole thing about how annie is reckless and irresponsible and her bad decisions have consequences? and it was like.. ridiculous to put the onus on her for that in that particular situation but you could very clearly see that this was not an isolated incident and that she was being branded that way by beth (and ruby to some extent) because of a pattern of behavior (and also beth’s own situation/issues)? like that situation encompassed a lifetime of characterization for BOTH of them without actually making annie a caricature of arrested development!!

that’s the kind of nuanced characterization that has been missing from how the show portrays annie lately and it’s so frustrating because they used to do it SO WELL. 

[hypermania]

So are you done with Good Girls now? I really miss you presence in the fandom and would love for you to write more fic.

i’m not done! i’m still watching and i’ll probably liveblog tonight but tbh it’s kind of taken a back seat for me for a few reasons:

1. i’ve been invested in sam wilson and bucky barnes for the better part of a decade and they’ve got their own show now so i’m living my best life lol

2. the good girls fandom... i don’t want to call it “drama” but maybe intra-fandom issues are, to be frank, getting old. every fandom has issues and in-fighting but it’s usually a lot easier to ignore. this fandom is small enough that it sometimes feels unavoidable and i flat-out scroll straight past a lot of posts that have blocks of texts when they’re from good girls blogs because i just.. don’t even want to know. but that means i end up missing a lot of actual content. so. it is what it is right now.

3. the show is making a lot of Choices that i don’t exactly enjoy. it’s not that i think they’re out of character or that i don’t understand why they’re going that route, but more so that i think they’re choosing the most boring and/or dumbest route possible. like, taking all that time to build up boland bubbles, just to have it destroyed as soon as they were up and running. i think it would’ve been far more interesting to let them actually be successful at it for awhile, and then have the rug pulled out from under them (especially in terms of the betrayal that dean felt over it).

or the whole thing with the parents of sarah’s donor. it’s just not landing. they could’ve had them be either straight up good people or straight up bad people but they chose this weird middle ground that is supposed to be funny but just isn’t at all. it just.. it’s flat. it’s not working. ruby’s and stan’s reactions to these people are in character and the situation is showing us that stan and ruby are ultimately good (or at least caring) people and that they are struggling with who they’ve become. but they could’ve achieved it without making the donor parents caricatures of people down on their luck.

or the situation with annie and men. we know she makes bad decisions and clings to guys she shouldn’t. but the whole situation with kevin was. a nightmare. it didn’t make sense AT ALL. it was in poor taste. and i THINK the point was supposed to be that she was growing because she went and hung out with him in his car after anyway but it just didn’t work for me at all.

i think everyone knows how i feel about the situation with the therapist because everybody feels the same about the situation with the therapist haha

then there’s the shit with eric. i don’t even know where to begin. i can’t believe that that made it out of the writers room, let alone into production and then post-production and then it actually aired. it’s bad. bad bad bad.

and then there’s phoebe. who i think is just untapped potential more than anything. i would be far more interested in watching her start to slip away from the fbi and into beth’s orbit because the fbi is doing the same thing to her that everyone else (except rio) did to beth by underestimating and undervaluing her. but instead they just have phoebe gunning for beth specifically, sort of the same way turner did, but it’s way less interesting. 

and this is not to say that it’s all bad! there’s a lot i am enjoying: the way beth and rio are pushing and pulling and one-upping each other and slowly finding their way back to what constitutes solid ground for them; annie’s slow-but-sure growth in her relationship with ben and in her own sense of self; the sort of role reversal in stan and ruby’s relationship from season one and how that affects them both as individuals and in their marriage; the continued deconstruction of the boland marriage.

but the problem is that there’s a lot more i dislike about the writing choices right now than things i do like, so. you know. i’d rather just disengage a little bit than be upset and angry and waste my energy on it, ya know?

this was all a very long-winded way of saying i’m not gone but i’m probably not going to be writing any more fic any time soon haha.