The Leila Hann Let's Watch Spoiler Thread: Seriously, Stop Spoiling Stuff

[LordYam]

Part of it is that in FMA Winry throws a wrench when she's annoyed. In anime that kinda thing is played for laughs but isn't as funny in real life. I think that's what they were doing with Yang. Leila just jumped to "Yang's a sociopathic brute" and refused to consider anything else. Whether you like the show or not that felt rather unfair.

Another point about Galactic Heroes (Leila never got that far) is how when some guys do end up enacting a coup to save democracy they basically just end up making things worse AND are ultimately just Reinhard's dupes. Japan has had a history of glorifying military coups so it was a nice subversion.

 

[Valette.Serafina]

Part of it is that in FMA Winry throws a wrench when she's annoyed. In anime that kinda thing is played for laughs but isn't as funny in real life. I think that's what they were doing with Yang. Leila just jumped to "Yang's a sociopathic brute" and refused to consider anything else. Whether you like the show or not that felt rather unfair.

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Unfair how? What about that interpretation is unfair? Setting aside that, yet again, that's not actually true, if it were true, what would make it unfair?

 

[Kuja]

I mean one man's 'reviewer refuses to consider anything else' is another's 'reviewer fails to be persuaded by counterarguments.'

Like I hate the wrench-throwing scenes in FMA a lot, too. I think they're a blight on the series. And I get why they're there: not only as comedic tone-breakers adhering to the general anime trope of 'tsundere female smash male character' but also serve the dual purpose of subtly reminding us that the main character is not invincible and also that Ed and Winry have a lot of unresolved issues caused by the firestorm they've been caught up in that has defined their teenage years.

The problem is that FMA plays the trope so hard it breaks SOD for me. This is a series where people are routinely killed by being shot or stabbed or beaten, a heavy wrench to the head (especially since the series sometimes shows blood with the impact) should be putting Ed in mortal danger. Not a 2-second cutaway gag where he lies on the floor and whines and then is ok immediately afterward. And it's not like FMA doesn't do comedy well when it wants to, but within the context of the greater show this particular adherence to the idea of the violent tsundere is like watching a version of Schindler's List where Bugs Bunny shows up and mallets a guy in the background of one scene. (EDIT: also to be clear, I really dislike the 'violent tsundere smash gag' trope in general; I think a lot of anime has historically overplayed that card. FMA is just particularly egregious about it.)

And if the past is any indication, nobody will ever convince me otherwise - I've read a lot of stuff about anime on various forums, I've watched a lot of anime, and going by what I've seen before, it doesn't matter if I get ten pages of replies extolling and explaining the tropes of anime and how the wrench-smashing scenes fit into FMA, I will not be moved on that point. Is that unreasonable? Maybe. I don't think so. I've explained why I feel this way about the trope and why it doesn't work in the instance of FMA, and sticking to that point doesn't make me inherently unreasonable, it means I have a strong opinion on the matter. Reasonability doesn't inherently mean 'will always change stance to meet people halfway.' That's closer to being a doormat.

Moreover, people are never obligated to engage with a given piece of art, or even engage with it a certain way. Art can ask that of the participants, but it's never mandatory. There's a lot of arguments in Leila's thread that can be boiled down to 'you're not engaging with the property the way I think you should' or 'I see x and y positive qualities in this property and I wish you did as well' and I think judging the history of Leila's threads, neither of those are going to be especially persuasive to her - she's the reviewer and it's her channel after all, people are paying to get her opinion on one piece of media after another and she feels she's giving it to them honestly and in her fashion, softening or putting excessive qualifiers on her posts is obviously not something she's willing to do. (And from a certain perspective, could even threaten her bottom line.) And it doesn't help, I think, that many of the properties that she's reviewed have taken the things she doesn't like on first contact and then doubled down on them - Bakemonogatari being the most obvious example. For my own part, I think she was much harsher on Exosquad than I would have been...but I have fond memories of Exosquad from when I was a kid, and at the end of the day anything I had to say to her over the matter would have boiled down to 'I think you're being harsher than necessary' and not any dispute over the actual facts.

Wish I had a better thesis to conclude this post on, but big shruggo. The threshold for reasonability is subjective.

(EDIT: wording)

 

[Simon_Jester]

In all fairness, it wouldn't exactly kill the people who have wrench-throwing lady throw wrenches for comic relief to just... have her throw something smaller and/or not made of steel instead?

 

[mr_stibbons]

Part of it is that in FMA Winry throws a wrench when she's annoyed. In anime that kinda thing is played for laughs but isn't as funny in real life. I think that's what they were doing with Yang. Leila just jumped to "Yang's a sociopathic brute" and refused to consider anything else. Whether you like the show or not that felt rather unfair.

Another point about Galactic Heroes (Leila never got that far) is how when some guys do end up enacting a coup to save democracy they basically just end up making things worse AND are ultimately just Reinhard's dupes. Japan has had a history of glorifying military coups so it was a nice subversion.

Click to shrink...

With Yang (and the rest of the girls, but she has the earliest incident of it) there is a bit of a dissonnance in early RWBY with the characters acting like stone cold badasses in fight scenes but regular sixteen year olds outside of it. Thats fine when the action scenes are against monsters in the wilderness, but it's a little disturbing when they fight human enemies in urban environments. For sixteen year olds, they're disturbingly calm about attacking other human beings with deadly weapons and seem completly unphased by collateral damage. Now, there is an element to the show that makes the anime fights less lethal, but its ambiguous if that actually applies to all the human mooks, and is only introduced halfway through the first season. For that first half a season, the viewer is just left with shonen genre cliches to make the leap that the protags haven't murdered dozens of gangsters in cold blood, and not everyone is going to come in with those assumptions.

 

[LordYam]

Unfair how? What about that interpretation is unfair? Setting aside that, yet again, that's not actually true, if it were true, what would make it unfair?

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Unfair because she did actually refuse to consider other interpretations even when pointed out no matter how respectfully. Leila gives the impression she's rather saw her own arm off than admit she might be wrong in first impressions.

And she doesn't make the same criticisms about someone like winry

 

[spacemonkey37]

Unfair because she did actually refuse to consider other interpretations even when pointed out no matter how respectfully. Leila gives the impression she's rather saw her own arm off than admit she might be wrong in first impressions.

And she doesn't make the same criticisms about someone like winry

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Okay, this is just untrue. From Leila's review of Burning the Candle:

There's a "psychopath Yang" joke that I've been waiting for weeks to make, and her sitting down with Blake would have been the perfect opportunity...but I'm not going to make it. Indeed, I can't make it. For the first time since the show's pilot - hell, since the fucking TRAILERS - I think we have finally seen the Yang that the writers MEANT to create. Until now, her execution was so botched that I had no idea what they were even trying to do with her, but now I know! A deeply caring and empathic person with highly acute social skills, who hides her greatest depths beneath a layer of mischief and affected nonchalance. This is a good character! This is who we should have been getting to know all this time, and I'm 99% sure that this is what she was MEANT to be all along.

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Right here we can see how Leila revised her opinion of Yang as new material was unveiled in the show. Her argument is not that "Yang the gaslighting psychopath" is the only possible interpretation of her character, and Leila was in fact quite explicit that she doesn't believe it was the intended reading. Leila's position is that the execution of Yang's character was botched badly enough that her initial take on it is a valid possible reading which is accidentally supported by the text.

 

[GuestLurker]

Granting that the Armenian (most notable iirc) gang is treated as "foreign" rather than "white," there's still a prominent "white" gang in the series from the very first episode: the Strike Team.

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And how many others who aren't effectively lionized by making them fight opponents who are more often than not treated as worse?

The series was directly based on the Rampart scandal, which most of SV is likely too young to remember. I don't even remember anything contemporary about it. The primary reason why the cop characters aren't even worse is because the LAPD threatened legal action.

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Biggest inaccuracy to real life might be that the show acts like there's only one gang in the force.

"Why didn't they just ride an Eagle to Mordor and throw the ring into Mount Doom? Why didn't they even discuss the idea given that Gandalf arrived at the meeting by Eagle and they're all spitballing ideas?"

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Because Sauron would be on the lookout for something as flashy as the eagles, and has his own air forces to fight them off if pressed, so they wouldn't be able to sneak the ring in as they needed to, but Sauron is too arrogant to look as a team of less than a dozen, almost half of them hobbits.

Right here we can see how Leila revised her opinion of Yang as new material was unveiled in the show. Her argument is not that "Yang the gaslighting psychopath" is the only possible interpretation of her character, and Leila was in fact quite explicit that she doesn't believe it was the intended reading. Leila's position is that the execution of Yang's character was botched badly enough that her initial take on it is a valid possible reading which is accidentally supported by the text.

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But this does touch on another issue she often has, where she may exaggerate some criticism for comedic effect while having honest points far too close together for them to feel separated, like a Cinema Sins review for a quick comparison, and the lack of tone makes seeing where she's joking and where she's going off on something she sees as an actual issue difficult to parse at best.

 

[Valette.Serafina]

Unfair because she did actually refuse to consider other interpretations even when pointed out no matter how respectfully. Leila gives the impression she's rather saw her own arm off than admit she might be wrong in first impressions.

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You undermine your argument when you base it on things that are factually incorrect. We have a very clear example of Leila coming to an incorrect conclusion in the first episode of Centaurworld. When it became clear that her conclusion was incorrect, she recognized it.

There is a difference between refusing to consider something and not agreeing with it.

But, setting aside that the issue you have here is quite simply counterfactual, you aren't actually addressing my question. What about that interpretation is unfair?

 

[LordYam]

Okay, this is just untrue. From Leila's review of Burning the Candle:

Right here we can see how Leila revised her opinion of Yang as new material was unveiled in the show. Her argument is not that "Yang the gaslighting psychopath" is the only possible interpretation of her character, and Leila was in fact quite explicit that she doesn't believe it was the intended reading. Leila's position is that the execution of Yang's character was botched badly enough that her initial take on it is a valid possible reading which is accidentally supported by the text.

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And yet she still continued to push that interpretation like it was solid fact. ZQFMGB gave some legitimate counterarguments regarding galactic heroes and Leila didn't really address them (simply saying the Alliance had plot armor). During the FMA reviews she kept describing Envy as a girl even though it was more ambiguous. There are plenty of times where she just digs in rather than admit error, and the most notable is her opinion of show quality. That part is almost CERTAINLY motivated by spite (hence why I compared her to Greg Bishansky; they're both adamant in their initial impressions of a show and are reluctant to change them).

 

[LordYam]

I mean one man's 'reviewer refuses to consider anything else' is another's 'reviewer fails to be persuaded by counterarguments.'

Like I hate the wrench-throwing scenes in FMA a lot, too. I think they're a blight on the series. And I get why they're there: not only as comedic tone-breakers adhering to the general anime trope of 'tsundere female smash male character' but also serve the dual purpose of subtly reminding us that the main character is not invincible and also that Ed and Winry have a lot of unresolved issues caused by the firestorm they've been caught up in that has defined their teenage years.

The problem is that FMA plays the trope so hard it breaks SOD for me. This is a series where people are routinely killed by being shot or stabbed or beaten, a heavy wrench to the head (especially since the series sometimes shows blood with the impact) should be putting Ed in mortal danger. Not a 2-second cutaway gag where he lies on the floor and whines and then is ok immediately afterward. And it's not like FMA doesn't do comedy well when it wants to, but within the context of the greater show this particular adherence to the idea of the violent tsundere is like watching a version of Schindler's List where Bugs Bunny shows up and mallets a guy in the background of one scene. (EDIT: also to be clear, I really dislike the 'violent tsundere smash gag' trope in general; I think a lot of anime has historically overplayed that card. FMA is just particularly egregious about it.)

And if the past is any indication, nobody will ever convince me otherwise - I've read a lot of stuff about anime on various forums, I've watched a lot of anime, and going by what I've seen before, it doesn't matter if I get ten pages of replies extolling and explaining the tropes of anime and how the wrench-smashing scenes fit into FMA, I will not be moved on that point. Is that unreasonable? Maybe. I don't think so. I've explained why I feel this way about the trope and why it doesn't work in the instance of FMA, and sticking to that point doesn't make me inherently unreasonable, it means I have a strong opinion on the matter. Reasonability doesn't inherently mean 'will always change stance to meet people halfway.' That's closer to being a doormat.

Moreover, people are never obligated to engage with a given piece of art, or even engage with it a certain way. Art can ask that of the participants, but it's never mandatory. There's a lot of arguments in Leila's thread that can be boiled down to 'you're not engaging with the property the way I think you should' or 'I see x and y positive qualities in this property and I wish you did as well' and I think judging the history of Leila's threads, neither of those are going to be especially persuasive to her - she's the reviewer and it's her channel after all, people are paying to get her opinion on one piece of media after another and she feels she's giving it to them honestly and in her fashion, softening or putting excessive qualifiers on her posts is obviously not something she's willing to do. (And from a certain perspective, could even threaten her bottom line.) And it doesn't help, I think, that many of the properties that she's reviewed have taken the things she doesn't like on first contact and then doubled down on them - Bakemonogatari being the most obvious example. For my own part, I think she was much harsher on Exosquad than I would have been...but I have fond memories of Exosquad from when I was a kid, and at the end of the day anything I had to say to her over the matter would have boiled down to 'I think you're being harsher than necessary' and not any dispute over the actual facts.

Wish I had a better thesis to conclude this post on, but big shruggo. The threshold for reasonability is subjective.

(EDIT: wording)

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No, you aren't obligated to engage. But I think that if someone tries to raise a counterargument you can at least try to consider where they're coming from. If I don't like a work I'm willing to at the very least hear out counterarguments. On some occasions I might actually be persuaded, but a lot of the times no I'm not. But you should at least be willing to make the effort at least. Leila doesn't do that. She basically doubles down, usually out of spite, and if a point is raised she still goes "I don't care" or dismisses it without much consideration (ZQFMG's points about Galactic heroes were dismissed out of hand).

It also doesn't help that I've seen people slam popular works purely because they think they'll look "sophisticated" or "smart", and that their criticism is usually very shallow. Others tend to be rather needy (privileging stories that share THEIR Ideologies.)

Leila might not be trying to put on airs of being smart or sophisticated, but she definitely comes off as more preferential to stories that share her ideals and unwilling to grasp nuance. So she can be somewhat needy

 

[Wateryblue]

My understanding is that the issues Leila has with Jojo never get fixed. The author's bizarre "a hero must stand alone" hangup means that heroes will virtually always fight solo no matter how little sense this makes or how idiotic it requires characters to act. The weird tendency towards introducing characters as depraved villains then shuffling them into the hero's party later remains. The pan-anime tendencies towards being horny and juvenile at times remains. These issues repeatedly deteriorate her enjoyment, no matter how much she enjoys Jojo's stronger moments like "antagonists that are antideluvian swole elementals".

I don't think further critique by Leila would be helpful because things like "why is Jojo's friend not helping him?" isn't constructive. Its just one of Jojo's strange conventions, critiques of it serve as much purpose as asking "Why can't action movie mooks hit the broad side of a barn? Why do action movie heroes only get flesh wounds when they do get hit?". Not everyone can engage with conventions like that.

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You say that but they do get fixed... Like part 5 is mostly all team battles, Giorno (the main character) gets only 2 solo fights. Like all the things you listed is mostly moot from part 5 onwards (and part 5 is the least " horny and juvenile" part

You may want to know what your talking about next time you attempt to throw criticism or else you'll get people like me wagging my fingers.

 

[Wateryblue]

If you read Lord of the Rings and your big takeaway is "Why didn't they just ride an Eagle to Mordor and throw the ring into Mount Doom? Why didn't they even discuss the idea given that Gandalf arrived at the meeting by Eagle and they're all spitballing ideas?" you didn't engage with the work well.

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I mean my takeaway was the wyrms the ringwraiths ride are stronger and faster than eagles

 

[Greener223224]

Bit late on the discussion, but is... Yang from RWBY actually a tsundere archetype? This is honestly the first time I hear her being described that way, and I don't think she's ever pulled any antic that fits the 'tsundere' archetype. Just a little confused is all.

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No, she's supposed to be a party girl. Or Tifa as written by people who've only watched Advent Children.

 

[SwiftRosenthal]

And how many others who aren't effectively lionized by making them fight opponents who are more often than not treated as worse?

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I'm going to quote the whole tweet thread by one of the writers, Glen Mazzara. I missed the source link myself in the main article.

#TheShield was inspired by the LAPD Rampart scandal involving LAPD's CRASH unit. Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums. That should tell you a lot.

Over 70 cops were accused of wrongdoing. Look it up. Pretty interesting stuff. Cops acting as criminals.

#TheShield was originally announced as RAMPART. LAPD shit itself. They threatened to sue FOX if we ever mentioned that our show was based on the LAPD.

Watch the show closely. We never say "LAPD." Our characters say, "police" or "PD" or "Farmington" but never "LAPD."

We were told the term "LAPD" was trademarked. Not sure if that's true but that's what we were told.

LAPD has trademarked their badges, too, so we had to create something that looked very different. In fact, FOX was so terrified of upsetting LAPD when we started shooting, they made us have our characters wear their badges on the wrong side of the uniform.

Take a look. US law enforcement wears their badges on the left side. #TheShield cops wear it on the right. We rationalized it as this being an ugly mirror version but the fact is, LAPD bullied us.

I also believe LAPD would not provide standard protection or traffic control when we were out on the street shooting our show. I could be wrong about that but I vaguely remember that.

This all occurred in late 2001/early 2002, just after 9/11. People hated us for portraying cops as anything but heroes at that time. We got a lot of shit for it.

We thought it was important to show the ugly side of policing. Especially at a time in which we were begging Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld to do whatever it takes to keep us safe.

Season 4 of #TheShield is all about how police use civil forfeiture to fund their departments by seizing civilian property.

I see a lot of folks examining the role of cop shows now. They should. And writers should take a good, hard look around and write the shit out of what's going on.

Hold up that mirror, no matter how ugly the truth may be. That's your fucking job.

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Q: Love your work on The Shield! Was just in the midst of a rewatch, up to middle of season 4. Was there ever any concern of glorifying Mackie's [sic] methods when they proved successful, a defense against "bad fans"?

A: I don't believe the back half of the show glorifies him at all.

Q: Totally agree, didn't mean to imply. Just curious if there were conversations about that balance of audience's POV of Mackie's [sic] effectiveness in the writer's room, showing show's moral stance vs making sure Mackie [sic] was a cop who still caught criminals.

A: We discussed EVERYTHING and then some.

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There is a very high chance that Leila and most of SV would miss the forest for the trees, and hate the show for "not" doing exactly what it's actually doing.

E: Two more relevant articles.

'The Shield': Creator Shawn Ryan on the Possibility of a Revival

He discusses casting Michael Chiklis and the possibility of a revival.

ew.com

How the Perfect Pilot Set ‘The Shield’ Up for the Perfect Ending

The FX corrupt-cop drama is known as one of the best shows of the 21st century. But it stands virtually alone in one regard: Its fully formed pilot episode planted the seeds for virtually everything that happened at the series’ conclusion.

www.theringer.com

 

[LordYam]

That does make a lot of sense. There are people who unironically say star wars is authoritarian even though the authoritarian characters are cruel incompetent bullies, or that it glorifies war (I'm sorry but there are instances when fighting is necessary or even good; certainly the algerians had the right to rise up against their french oppressors, and the palestinians have the right to resist Israel). Or automatically dismissing superheroes as fascists just because they use force.

A lot of posters here tend to lean further left than America's mainstream and they see all cops as being bad, or don't believe that an institution like the police is needed.

I can't really agree with that. No matter what society comes up there are going to be people who refuse to follow the rules, and plenty of them won't just stop if asked nicely or there are social programs. As such, some form of organization that exerts force is needed, and neighborhood watches tend to have even lower standards than the police (police keep some of the worse out while neighborhood watches will accept anyone who volunteers). There are plenty of whackers who try to volunteer purely because they want to feel like a badass.

In short, while policing definitely needs an overhaul it's not going away anytime soon. I also think that automatically assuming that every cop is a bad person is short sighted.

 

[Estro]

I'm going to quote the whole tweet thread by one of the writers, Glen Mazzara. I missed the source link myself in the main article.




There is a very high chance that Leila and most of SV would miss the forest for the trees, and hate the show for "not" doing exactly what it's actually doing.

E: Two more relevant articles.

'The Shield': Creator Shawn Ryan on the Possibility of a Revival

He discusses casting Michael Chiklis and the possibility of a revival.

ew.com

How the Perfect Pilot Set ‘The Shield’ Up for the Perfect Ending

The FX corrupt-cop drama is known as one of the best shows of the 21st century. But it stands virtually alone in one regard: Its fully formed pilot episode planted the seeds for virtually everything that happened at the series’ conclusion.

www.theringer.com

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I mean, I think that's defending shield a bit too much. While they're clearly trying, it's definitely their intent, it's also muddled by the fact that Jack Reacher in 24 and most cop shows do very similar things except the intent is much less clear or even glorifying the same acts. And in Shield they also muddle their own message several times, as they try to do "good cops bad cops" things without a real examination of the structural antagonism inherent in the modern policing mindset.

While we can laud their intent, and it's certainly better than, well, 24 and Bluebloods, we cannot get away from the fact that you cannot read intent into a show's text. Especially when you're going in blind, as Lelia would, the text must stand on it's own, and when people lionise Reacher and... fail to vilify Walter White (even though it's probably even more clear in BB that Walter is meant to be an awful fucking person), and the genre assumptions will be carried over, even if that might be unfair to Shield.

And well, I don't think the text pulls it off well enough for it to truly be unfair to shield. People like to make heroes of protagonists, and Vic is most definitely the protagonist of Shield.

 

[LordYam]

I mean, I think that's defending shield a bit too much. While they're clearly trying, it's definitely their intent, it's also muddled by the fact that Jack Reacher in 24 and most cop shows do very similar things except the intent is much less clear or even glorifying the same acts. And in Shield they also muddle their own message several times, as they try to do "good cops bad cops" things without a real examination of the structural antagonism inherent in the modern policing mindset.

While we can laud their intent, and it's certainly better than, well, 24 and Bluebloods, we cannot get away from the fact that you cannot read intent into a show's text. Especially when you're going in blind, as Lelia would, the text must stand on it's own, and when people lionise Reacher and... fail to vilify Walter White (even though it's probably even more clear in BB that Walter is meant to be an awful fucking person), and the genre assumptions will be carried over, even if that might be unfair to Shield.

And well, I don't think the text pulls it off well enough for it to truly be unfair to shield. People like to make heroes of protagonists, and Vic is most definitely the protagonist of Shield.

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Even 24 has more nuance than a lot of people give it credit for. The big bad of season 2 is an oil baron trying to engineer a war in the Middle East to make money and the entire third act is Jack rushing to expose this and stop needless death. Jack also gets challenged in later seasons of the show (his going off the deep end in season 8 is a deconstruction of Bauer himself) and they did make clear that most Muslims aren't terrorists (there a fair number of sympathetic portrayals)

 

[SwiftRosenthal]

I mean, I think that's defending shield a bit too much. While they're clearly trying, it's definitely their intent, it's also muddled by the fact that Jack Reacher in 24 and most cop shows do very similar things except the intent is much less clear or even glorifying the same acts. And in Shield they also muddle their own message several times, as they try to do "good cops bad cops" things without a real examination of the structural antagonism inherent in the modern policing mindset.

While we can laud their intent, and it's certainly better than, well, 24 and Bluebloods, we cannot get away from the fact that you cannot read intent into a show's text. Especially when you're going in blind, as Lelia would, the text must stand on it's own, and when people lionise Reacher and... fail to vilify Walter White (even though it's probably even more clear in BB that Walter is meant to be an awful fucking person), and the genre assumptions will be carried over, even if that might be unfair to Shield.

And well, I don't think the text pulls it off well enough for it to truly be unfair to shield. People like to make heroes of protagonists, and Vic is most definitely the protagonist of Shield.

Click to shrink...

24 Jack was Bauer. Reacher is from a completely different series. With 24 in particular, the versions of the show that the far right loved and the far left hated, though nearly identical except for each side's personal reactions, are very different from the show that actually aired. See the occasional discussion about it in the Problematic Fiction That You Enjoyed thread.

"Vic Mackey is too likable" is directly addressed in the back half of the Ringer article:

The twist had helped Ryan secure a series order and robust initial viewership, but it also presented a conundrum: how to make spectators tune in weekly to watch a confirmed cop killer. "Once they picked up the show to series, then it was like, 'Oh wow, well now I've got to deal with this,'" he says. As it turned out, making viewers want to watch Mackey was almost disturbingly easy. The conventional TV wisdom, Ryan notes, was that for a TV series to succeed, its protagonist had to be likable and sympathetic, but breakout HBO shows Oz and The Sopranos had defied that maxim and started to change many minds in the industry, Ryan's included. "I wasn't worried about making Vic sympathetic or likable," he says. "I was interested in making him interesting."

What Ryan discovered was that he seemingly couldn't make Vic unlikable no matter what he tried. In Seasons 4 and 5, [Glenn] Close and [Forest] Whitaker's characters presented a more moral alternative to Mackey, but "there was no moral conflict for the vast majority of the audience," Ryan says. "They were on Vic's side. … I had conversations with Forest Whitaker, who was just in disbelief that the audience was having some of the reaction they were having. He's like, 'Do they not get I'm the good guy?'"

Vic did do good at times, though it would have been difficult for him to balance the scales. The audience's unflagging loyalty was partly a testament to Chiklis's charisma, but it also suggested something about the nature of narrative. "It was a real interesting lesson to me about the power of camera and the power of perspective," Ryan says. "When you train a camera on someone long enough and you humanize someone, despite their flaws, people tend to root for them. It's interesting. It's scary a little bit."

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Much like the dichotomy between Memetic Jack Bauer and the actual Jack Bauer, if Leila decides that Vic is supposed to be cool and badass ("and that's bad"), she'll be making the exact same mistake as the normie viewers who could only see Vic as cool and badass ("and that's good").

 

[LordYam]

I mean, I think that's defending shield a bit too much. While they're clearly trying, it's definitely their intent, it's also muddled by the fact that Jack Reacher in 24 and most cop shows do very similar things except the intent is much less clear or even glorifying the same acts. And in Shield they also muddle their own message several times, as they try to do "good cops bad cops" things without a real examination of the structural antagonism inherent in the modern policing mindset.

While we can laud their intent, and it's certainly better than, well, 24 and Bluebloods, we cannot get away from the fact that you cannot read intent into a show's text. Especially when you're going in blind, as Lelia would, the text must stand on it's own, and when people lionise Reacher and... fail to vilify Walter White (even though it's probably even more clear in BB that Walter is meant to be an awful fucking person), and the genre assumptions will be carried over, even if that might be unfair to Shield.

And well, I don't think the text pulls it off well enough for it to truly be unfair to shield. People like to make heroes of protagonists, and Vic is most definitely the protagonist of Shield.

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That's the fault of the viewer. I also think that if someone argues against the initial interpretation you should be willing to hear them out rather than dismissing out of hand. Leila tends to decide a show is good or bad and than refuses to budge. If someone points out that you're not supposed to admire a character after she decides they are meant to be she'll just dismiss the arguer as a fanboy.

 

[Estro]

24 Jack was Bauer. Reacher is from a completely different series. With 24 in particular, the versions of the show that the far right loved and the far left hated, though nearly identical except for each side's personal reactions, are very different from the show that actually aired. See the occasional discussion about it in the Problematic Fiction That You Enjoyed thread.

"Vic Mackey is too likable" is directly addressed in the back half of the Ringer article:

Much like the dichotomy between Memetic Jack Bauer and the actual Jack Bauer, if Leila decides that Vic is supposed to be cool and badass ("and that's bad"), she'll be making the exact same mistake as the normie viewers who could only see Vic as cool and badass ("and that's good").

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I mean, you're realying here on extracanonical evidence, which is my entire point?

Like, that article explicitly says "he was always likable" and lelia isn't going to have that article. Like, this is the writers of shield going "we absolutely failed in doing what we tried to do", admittedly because the audience is primed to see Vic and the like as "good" due to genre convention.

Now, Lelia likely won't see him as good, but like... Shield failed. That's what the article is saying there. Shield failed at making Vic the sort of pathetic loser he really should be, and now you're expecting lelia to read past that and understand the that "cool and badass" Vic - which the article admits he comes across as - is meant to be a deconstruction of the self-same trope with some self-awareness?

 

[LordYam]

I mean, you're realying here on extracanonical evidence, which is my entire point?

Like, that article explicitly says "he was always likable" and lelia isn't going to have that article. Like, this is the writers of shield going "we absolutely failed in doing what we tried to do", admittedly because the audience is primed to see Vic and the like as "good" due to genre convention.

Now, Lelia likely won't see him as good, but like... Shield failed. That's what the article is saying there. Shield failed at making Vic the sort of pathetic loser he really should be, and now you're expecting lelia to read past that and understand the that "cool and badass" Vic - which the article admits he comes across as - is meant to be a deconstruction of the self-same trope with some self-awareness?

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I'd expect her to honestly consider opposing arguments without just dismissing the person making it as a fanboy.

I actually watched 24; it was definitely problematic but it could also be somewhat forward thinking and nuanced.

 

[Fourthspartan56]

I'd expect her to honestly consider opposing arguments without just dismissing the person making it as a fanboy.

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Which is what she does. Don't confuse not agreeing with you with not fairly considering your arguments, sometimes a person just doesn't find an argument compelling.

 

[SwiftRosenthal]

I mean, you're realying here on extracanonical evidence, which is my entire point?

Like, that article explicitly says "he was always likable" and lelia isn't going to have that article. Like, this is the writers of shield going "we absolutely failed in doing what we tried to do", admittedly because the audience is primed to see Vic and the like as "good" due to genre convention.

Now, Lelia likely won't see him as good, but like... Shield failed. That's what the article is saying there. Shield failed at making Vic the sort of pathetic loser he really should be, and now you're expecting lelia to read past that and understand the that "cool and badass" Vic - which the article admits he comes across as - is meant to be a deconstruction of the self-same trope with some self-awareness?

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The Shield's writers basically slammed straight into the cop equivalent of the problem that Gundam has struggled with for nearly 45 years: "Wow, cool robot!" vs. "War is bad." I can't blame them for the audience being dumb.

 

[LordYam]

Which is what she does. Don't confuse not agreeing with you with not fairly considering your arguments, sometimes a person just doesn't find an argument compelling.

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Not really. The reason she doesn't find arguments compelling is because she's locked onto the idea of a show being good or bad and than digs in rather than basing on actual merits. If she decides a show is bad than it's bad and nothing anyone says will get her to reconsider.

In that regard yeah she would rather saw her own arm off than reconsider.