For the next three Xena episodes it's clear that the writers had created a pattern for themselves: interspersing heavy, thought-provoking material with lighter, fluffier comedy. It's an odd fit, yet inherent campiness of the show somehow consistently managed to pull off the tonal shifts. Even when it was dark, there was a gleam of humour, and even the craziest comedy episodes found a sense of poignancy.
These ones in particular were a gift: anything with Callisto automatically raises the quality of an episode. What an amazing character; up there with Azula, Demona and Maleficient in the pantheon of unforgettable female villains.
Fandom is still collectively licking its wounds over Game of Thrones, and despite my anger over what was done to Daenerys and Missandei, I'm starting to look back on all the things I'll miss: the promotional art, the gorgeous soundtrack, those amazing costumes and high production values - there's a good chance most of this will return for the prequel (which is apparently called Bloodmoon) and now I know my first instinct on the franchise was the correct one: just watch the YouTube clips for the best the show has to offer, and don't get invested.
And it's not like there isn't plenty of other great stuff on its way...
Despite its subject matter, Killing Eve isn't a drama you can take particularly seriously. It requires believing that a woman might be attracted to a hired assassin after she's murdered her best friend in cold blood, and who then recruits her into MI5 in order to help track another potential killer (she can't just use another agent?)
But once you've turned off your brain and accepted the nature of its dark comedy, the show is riveting. Eve Polastri is an ordinary enough woman, married to a high school teacher and working a desk job at MI5 - until she connects the dots between several high-profile murders and theorizes that a female assassin is the culprit.
Impressed by her tenacity, her boss eventually recruits her for an off-the-books assignment to hunt down the killer: Codename Villanelle.
It's only a matter of time before Eve's obsession with the case and the killer has a detrimental affect on her home life, but at this point she's in too deep to stop. I have not yet finished season two, but it's obvious that Eve is not only attracted to Villanelle, but also her way of life, and is beginning to demonstrate sociopathic tendencies of her own.
Sandra Oh is fantastic, managing to juggle fear, intrigue, attraction and those aforementioned comedic beats as she hangs on desperately to her failing moral compass. To watch this highly intelligent but emotionally messy woman go up against a trained assassin makes for a glorious trainwreck - one that doesn't compromise Eve as a character along the way.
Okay, so it looks like I read and watched stunningly little this month, which isn't strictly true - it's just that Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J. Maas is the size of a doorstop, and I'm juggling about six separate shows at the moment (Into the Badlands, Killing Eve, American Gods, and the four Arrowverse shows).
And of course, I had to take some time to have a quick meltdown over Game of Thrones. I got over it, but the fact I didn't watch the last three episodes means I'm not going to include it here.
So that leaves a grand total of two books, one graphic novel, and two movies...
First, here's a quick reminder of my relationship with Game of Thrones. I have read the first three books of George R.R. Martin's series, but not seen the first five seasons of the show in their entirety. Partly because of the show's sexual violence, and partly because back in 2011 I had no way of getting hold of full episodes, my knowledge of the story was garnered through YouTube clips and popculture osmosis.
For the most part I entertained myself with on-line discussion (which I often find more interesting than actual shows - if you're a long-time reader of this blog, you probably already know that) and all the essential clips (which helpfully left out most of the gratuitous violence and rape).
But by the time season six rolled around, the show had overtaken the unfinished book series and I admit to being fascinated by the idea of a show continuing to tell a story beyond the reach of its source material. As they said frequently in the promotional material for that year: "you have no idea what's coming next." To my knowledge, a show outpacing the material it's based on had never happened before (at least not till The Handmaid's Tale), and that whole concept intrigued me.
I wanted to see how things would be handled - so ironically, I hopped on the bandwagon at about the same time everyone else began to sour on the show.
In no less than three of my fandoms, an interesting discussion on a particular subject has emerged. The fandoms are Stranger Things, Star Wars and Game of Thrones, and the subject is that of friendships between women.
In recent promotional materials and trailers released for all three franchises, there's been an interesting emphasis on female characters, and specifically the relationships they have with each other. The trailer for season three of Stranger Things involved several shots of Eleven and Max hanging out with each other, which is notable considering their only interaction in the second season was Eleven rebuffing Max's offer of a handshake.
On a similar note, there were several still images released for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, which included one of Rey and Rose together. This is notable for two reasons: firstly because the two have never interacted together on-screen, and secondly because there's no image of Rey with either Finn or Poe, two characters she would have greater reason to be pictured with.
Yes, the trailer was very heavy on shots of the official trio, but it still strikes me as significant that of the entire collection of stills, the only one that features Rey interacting with someone is the same one that features Rose (who appears in no other bit of promotion).
Finally, the very first footage we saw of Game of Thrones's season eight was of Daenerys being introduced to Sansa at Winterfell, and the rather cool reception she received. Of all the material they could have selected - the dragons flying overhead, the money-shots of the Unsullied entering the gates, any one of the myriad reunions that take place within its walls, they chose to go with the meeting between two of its female characters, in which even Jon Snow is more of a bystander than a participant.
So it's not just me, right? In all three of these fairly massive franchises, there has been an emphasis - to one degree or another - on the relationships between women. And that interests me.
So, I take it we all made it through Marvel's Endgame and Game of Thrones's long nightsafely? I'll have more to say on both in a later post...
This log took a little longer than usual to put together. It's been difficult to write lately, though this means more downtime to read, which can never be considered a bad thing. This month I continued my "finish what you started" reading list, as well as my "treat yo self" one, not to mention a Disney animated classic, a feline-inspired musical, and several 2018 films/2019 shows (my bid to play catch-up in this regard is failing miserably).
We got cats, school-girl detectives, secret assassins, star ships, space ports, superheroes, time travel, fairy tales, robots in disguise, and Disney Princesses.
