Now about 80% of all the bazillion plots that are
littering this show have all decided to be messily inserted into one episode.
Really, all it does is highlight just how messily stuffed this show is. Part of
this really shows by the exposition that is pasted on top of things
So we have the Countess who is duly pissed in general
about her one-true-love-and-creator Rudy and Natasha (who she doesn’t really
give a shit about and plans to kill) being locked up by James. She expositions
in elaborate, poetic and quite beautiful style about how very very pissed she
is. I would say this is unnecessary info-dumping but praise it for at least
being pretty info-dumping but it IS necessary – it’s necessary because we have
so many plot lines it’s easy to forget that the Countess is pissed or really
cares that much about Rudy – especially after we have the serial killer episode
last week
Which, by the way, is completely absent this week. There’s
not even a reference. Both of these plot lines really do not belong in the same
show. It’s like two shows had a violent collisions, the actors got concussion
and confused and accidently stumbled into the different sets but kept reciting
their lines regardless of relevance and both the poor directors are trying to
make it work.
We also have Ramona and Donovan back on their revenge
kick. And we got some more Ramona’s backstory – which was kind of nice to have
her developed. It was extremely touching and meaningful and tragic – and finally
we see a show that really sells the tragedy of immortality. I enjoyed that a
lot – though even though the painful nature of caring for someone with
Alzheimers was beautifully depicted it was still that very classic depiction of
disability: a burden, a tragedy for others, a pain other people have to endure.
And then this storyline ends up being cut off with
Donovan double crossing and double crossing and making one of the most
ridiculous decisions I’ve seen in a long time.
Yes, that storyline appears to be over – Ramona made a
couple of cameo appearances and is now locked away. What a completely
pointlessly dismissive way of using this character. And cameo pretty much sums
up this storyline as well – it isn’t a storyline, it’s a brief interlude
In fact that sums up most of the storylines this season –
cameo interludes. Liz finding true love? Well nice we looked at her story and developed
her – and now it’s gone? Is that it? Is it just snide comments from here on in?
And what about Alex and the flock of baby vamps now running
amok? There’s absolutely no time to turn this storyline into anything more than
another aborted cameo plot.
We have Iris and the pornographers – and I actually kind
of liked her objections to pornography: that it gives people very unrealistic
and wrong ideas of what sex is like and what makes it enjoyable… but why is it
even here? In a show that has 8 gajillion pointless, nonsense storylines what
did this interlude add? This is the whole problem with this season – all these
storylines, none of them developed leading to most of the time spent watching
the show as pointless.
I suppose Countess marrying Will is main plot line – but whyyy?
Why did we have to turn her whole seduce-a-rich-guy-and-kill-him-for-money such
a hot mess? The whole gold digger storyline is never going to be pretty because
there’s such a gross stench of misogyny to the whole thing: beware the woman
she’s just after your money, she’s just a predator.
But then it adds a level of homophobia – and yes Will has
now declared he is bisexual. Except we’ve already seen in previous episodes
that he is not attracted to women – he even had to call in a male fluffer so
her could perform with his new bride. You can attach the word bisexual to it –
but that just makes the whole depiction a messy treatment of both bisexual men
(a bisexual man is just a gay man trying to force himself into a relationship
with a woman he doesn’t want and his desperation will just lead to tragedy?)
and gay men (in a relationship with a woman, foolish, easily exploited and
dead). Especially when we add the Countess and Natasha on top of that –
introduced as a bisexual threesome it was mere seconds before the idea that
Countess was interested in both Natasha and Rudy was banished and this episode
she’s plotting Natasha’s death. These bisexual women are only bisexual because
it lets them be close to the straight man they’re both fixated on. It’s a hot
mess.
It’s a mess. But did we ever expect anything different.
