BBC Little Women, Episode 2
Sep. 22nd, 2018 07:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerEpisode 2 of the recent BBC adaptation of Little Women is not quite as mind-bogglingly bad as episode 1, although possibly just because most of the badness is more of the same instead of a shock and a surprise.
Marmee continues to seem vaguely incompetent and overwhelmed when she is supposed to be basically a domestic goddess.
Amy is not quite as Evil as in episode 1 (on the other hand, it’s hard to match “burning your sister’s handwritten manuscript and then gloating about it while slinking toward her like a supervillainess”), but I think you will all be happy to learn that when the episode ends, she’s drawing a self-portrait: clearly already at work at the Dorian Grey portrait that will keep her sweet-faced and innocent even as she builds up a criminal empire.
Actually, the miniseries is clearly moving toward reforming Amy, and it’s actually made Laurie/Amy seem like a viable pairing - partly just by giving them more scenes together, although also through HEAVY FORESHADOWING like the scene where Amy is looking through Aunt March’s jewelry box, and finds Aunt March’s wedding ring, which slips through her hand and drops to the floor… and Laurie picks it up and gives it back.
Okay fine then. I see what you did there.
Just in case we still weren’t on board, they’ve also given Jo & Laurie zero chemistry: their bantering friendship here feels purely combative, like they don’t really like each other that muh. There’s one scene where Laurie kisses Jo (while Beth lies upstairs, possibly on her deathbed!), and Jo just kind of lies on the couch, totally unresponsive as he touches his mouth to hers, and it is the least sexy thing ever.
Given that total passionlessness, I’m not convinced they’re going to be able to sell Jo/Bhaer, at least in any romantic sense, because it seems like Jo is just not into guys or maybe not into sex at all. But Bhaer hasn’t shown up yet, so we’ll see.
The pacing is a little odd, but honestly this was probably inevitable with a three-episode series. Little Women could be neatly broken into two episodes, or four episodes - but three means that the break between the two halves of the story much inevitably fall in an odd place. Caswill chooses to put it at the end of episode 2, which means that the entirety of Good Wives is going to be crammed into one hour.
Marmee continues to seem vaguely incompetent and overwhelmed when she is supposed to be basically a domestic goddess.
Amy is not quite as Evil as in episode 1 (on the other hand, it’s hard to match “burning your sister’s handwritten manuscript and then gloating about it while slinking toward her like a supervillainess”), but I think you will all be happy to learn that when the episode ends, she’s drawing a self-portrait: clearly already at work at the Dorian Grey portrait that will keep her sweet-faced and innocent even as she builds up a criminal empire.
Actually, the miniseries is clearly moving toward reforming Amy, and it’s actually made Laurie/Amy seem like a viable pairing - partly just by giving them more scenes together, although also through HEAVY FORESHADOWING like the scene where Amy is looking through Aunt March’s jewelry box, and finds Aunt March’s wedding ring, which slips through her hand and drops to the floor… and Laurie picks it up and gives it back.
Okay fine then. I see what you did there.
Just in case we still weren’t on board, they’ve also given Jo & Laurie zero chemistry: their bantering friendship here feels purely combative, like they don’t really like each other that muh. There’s one scene where Laurie kisses Jo (while Beth lies upstairs, possibly on her deathbed!), and Jo just kind of lies on the couch, totally unresponsive as he touches his mouth to hers, and it is the least sexy thing ever.
Given that total passionlessness, I’m not convinced they’re going to be able to sell Jo/Bhaer, at least in any romantic sense, because it seems like Jo is just not into guys or maybe not into sex at all. But Bhaer hasn’t shown up yet, so we’ll see.
The pacing is a little odd, but honestly this was probably inevitable with a three-episode series. Little Women could be neatly broken into two episodes, or four episodes - but three means that the break between the two halves of the story much inevitably fall in an odd place. Caswill chooses to put it at the end of episode 2, which means that the entirety of Good Wives is going to be crammed into one hour.
no subject
Date: 2018-09-23 01:13 am (UTC)Bah. One of the elements I really liked about the 1994 Little Women on recent rewatch was how instantly, strongly, and believably Jo and Laurie clicked as friends, which meant absolutely nothing about whether they should end up romantically together.
no subject
Date: 2018-09-23 11:51 am (UTC)Actually, that may have been what I was thinking. Jo expresses it by shoving a cushion between them on the couch and gazing longingly at the door.
no subject
Date: 2018-09-23 08:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-09-23 08:09 pm (UTC)He was! And adorably goofy! I am saddened that he seems to have misplaced the goofiness as he grew and turned into Batman.
no subject
Date: 2018-09-23 08:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-09-23 03:22 am (UTC)//VICTORIOUS FISTPUMP
Actually, the miniseries is clearly moving toward reforming Amy
....//sad deflating
it seems like Jo is just not into guys or maybe not into sex at all
....wellllll that was kinda the impression I got the first dozen times I read the book as a kid. Jo wanted to be the boy. (Then after I got a bit older I wanted her to marry Laurie. Hah. Jo/Bhaer seemed about as bad as Meg/Mr Brooke.)
Caswill chooses to put it at the end of episode 2, which means that the entirety of Good Wives is going to be crammed into one hour.
Haha, they're going to cut all the Meg stuff. Bet you half a dollar. Because that romance is all about Meg learning to be domestic and make a happy home, and that is what resonates the least with modern audiences. (Altho they like to keep in the "the jelly won't gel" scene for comedy.)
no subject
Date: 2018-09-23 11:50 am (UTC)I think "Jo is not into guys" is a valid reading of the text but also a difficult one for a movie to embrace if it also wants to keep the canonical ending, because she does marry a guy at the end and... well, I guess someone could try to sell it as a marriage of "we want to start a school together! We are such good platonic life partners." But otherwise it would be kind of a bummer ending.
You are 100% right and they did cut most of the Meg stuff while keeping "the jelly won't gel" - and adding in a childbirth scene, because why not, I guess? But this is like the one time in the entire episode where Marmee gets to be steady and forthright, - in short, is actually in character - so I can't complain too much.
no subject
Date: 2018-09-23 08:01 pm (UTC)YESSSS especially with the portrait! And maybe she could paint a portrait of Laurie and suck the life out of him as well, a la Poe.
I think "Jo is not into guys" is a valid reading of the text but also a difficult one for a movie to embrace if it also wants to keep the canonical ending, because she does marry a guy at the end and... well, I guess someone could try to sell it as a marriage of "we want to start a school together! We are such good platonic life partners."
I think that is pretty much just how I read it when I was eight, LOL. Bhaer is such an ultimate Daddy Figure for me and I am....so not into that. The Gabriel Byrne version of him was very pretty, tho, just like the Alan Rickman version of Col Brandon.
You are 100% right and they did cut most of the Meg stuff while keeping "the jelly won't gel"
HOW DID I KNOW
and adding in a childbirth scene, because why not, I guess?
Whaaa? altho, YAY Marmee. (Someone should write a novel based on her life, if they haven't already.)
no subject
Date: 2018-09-24 01:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-09-24 11:08 pm (UTC)