I Just Wasn't Made for These Times: Bwahaha we should have seen the word "made" in the title and guessed the whole reveal. Anyway, the important stuff..
Yeah, I'm kind of kicking myself in retrospect for missing that one. I thought it was purely a "man out of time" reference.
I was writing a wonderful post about pubic hair in my head during this scene when suddenly it was revealed she was bathing in some flim flam lederhosen thing which is RIDICULOUS. Or maybe she's trying to mitigate her sin of bathing alone? Look here, I'm not really doing this, I have sorta clothes on! Yeah that's it.
I thought in last week's episode Alak made reference to a flimsy piece of clothing that Christie would be wearing while bathing and therefore not be totally naked. That's what I figured Stahma was wearing.
The doctor storyline was interesting. It shows you how much they need a doctor that they have to put up with her keeping such a thing from them.
They hinted at this earlier and it is an interesting line to follow: do you get rid of your healer if you suspect they were a war criminal? Even if it means giving up your best bet at healing people (and she must be damned good if Tommy can go from being in a coma last episode to being up and moving 2 days later...).
The whole deal with the astronaut returning to his much older wife.. seriously? The 28 year old wife of a cutting edge hero astronaut who dies, famous forever, and she doesn't find someone else? Of course she finds someone else. She is a beautiful A list woman. That was dumb. Also does he tell her about his silver blood?! Because we are waaaaay past clones here in terms of accepting the dead person is alive.
Maybe she found someone new and they died during the Pale Wars, leading her to decide she was better off alone than being with a third person who would die. Maybe she was with someone else and they died naturally. We don't know. What's dumb is the whole cliched "I'm hanging clothes and I sense that my long lost lover is back" trope (maybe he spoke to her, I don't know, I just read it as her "sensing" he was back).
The whole thing was vague. For all we know, he did throw himself into the mines and what we saw was just Amanda's romanticized version of what she thought happened. I know it was heavily hinting that he did survive and just left Defiance, but it wasn't clear one way or the other.
With the recent game commercials, I guess it was inevitable the plague would hit the show. I guess it's just frustrating that the show lacks a sense of cohesiveness. While someone up thread mentioned
Warehouse 13 being the best it's going to be because they stick to the "artifact of the week" plots, at least it has a sense of what kind of show it is.
Defiance, to me, suffers because it's just one plot event after another that distracts from what they set up in the pilot.
The "Romeo and Juliet" plot of Alak and Christie only gets mentions here and there and the tension of the McCauley/Tarr feud is all but gone. All chances of Irisia being interesting are gone for me, because every time they do something interesting with her character, the next episode's plot makes what happened to her a "C" story, at best. The mayoral election they keep teasing (both in the show and the previews), which could have been an interesting "B" plot in a string of episodes (not only giving Amanda something to do, other than fight off sleazy E-Rep people, but also finding a way to make the McCauley/Tarr feud interesting), now seems to be something they're going to shoehorn into a season finale. McCauley and Nolan not liking each other is totally gone, replaced by Nolan not trusting him, but hey, he's got good alcohol and remembers some of the stuff I remember.
And now, "The Doc was a War Criminal" is going to be snowed under by "Only She Can Save Us From the Plague."
Oh and then there's the ex-Mayor popping up every once in a while being evil, which leads me to wonder if the people of Defiance knew this about her beforehand. She's pretty open about her plans, even going as far in the pilot to talk about them in a diner. And no one even seems to be shocked that their seemingly kind, grandmotherly ex-mayor has a gaping hole where her heart should be. Rafe wasn't surprised at all by her last episode. The only one who seemed to buy what the ex-Mayor was selling is Amanda. I would love an episode where everyone finds out that she was behind the Volge attack. Then I'd love Rafe, Datak, Doc Yewll, Kenya, etc. all saying, "Yeah, we knew that bitch was evil," while Amanda goes, "But she was always so nice to me..."
All interesting plots that lead to dramatic tension are undone by the need to keep putting forth new and "exciting" plots in each episode. I was thrilled to hear the plot for last week's episode. I thought the inherent drama in forcing groups to remain in-doors would provide lots of tension. Imagine Rafe and Datak having to spend time together. The ex-Mayor and Quentin playing cat-and-mouse. Christie and Stahma together. Nolan, walking in on Tommy and Irisia, just as they are told not to leave the premises. Or, instead of that, have Tommy and Irisia just finish having sex when the announcement is made and now they have to talk to each other, and figure out what is going on between them. That would leave Nolan free to be with Amanda, stuck together, fueling the "will-they-won't-they" as they begin arguing over Kenya, then over Nolan's predilection for doing what he wants, and his killing Pol Madis, and then realize their feelings, just as the threat ends and they come to their senses.
Now
that could have served to advance many of the plots that were introduced and then left to wither and die. Sure a lot of what I mentioned is pretty cliche, but it's cliche because it serves its purpose, story-wise.
If
Defiance is going to keep me, they are going to have to start addressing some of the plots they introduced, instead of trying for the next and biggest thing.
