The American Way: rugged individualism within socially acceptable parameters!

[Found this in my drafts. It was written in 2016, but I'm still mad.]

So, the Downton Abbey series finale was an endless parade of reproducing heterosexuals. Though, thanks to Thomas, it still wasn't as unrelentingly straight as the LOST finale, and you know you done fucked up if Downton Abbey is gayer than your time-slippy post-modern science fiction fantasy island show.

Anyway, I'm still super mad that Mary Crawley stole Alicia Florick's boyfriend. Julianna Margulies and Matthew Goode had amazing chemistry, and then he left her for England and an unconvincing romance with the daughter of a lord, though he's still very handsome.

I think I stopped caring about the show somewhere around the part where Julian Fellowes decided to give Anna the gift of sexual assault, but I kept watching out of inertia and love for Dame Maggie Smith.

As for The Good Wife finale, it made me cry to have Will back, even if it wasn't real, and even if it made me worry Alicia was about to have a stroke or something—she really did love him, but she made the choice to not be with him, and that's put her where she is today, still choosing to stand by her worthless husband because of the power and security it gives her and maybe she loses someone else because of it, two someone elses, because Diane is pissed. I liked that the ending was ambiguous. Because maybe Alicia didn't deserve a happy ending. Maybe she had the chance, a couple chances, and didn't take them.

I started watching Avenue Department Q and it took me like four days to get through the first episode because it took FOREVER to get where it was going. I'd watch fifteen minutes, decide I didn't want to spend any more time with these assholes, and go do something else. Then the next day I'd watch fifteen more minutes. But once I finally got to the end of the first episode, I was like, "Ohhhh, I see."

And then I stayed up past my bedtime to watch the next three episodes. It's still fully populated with assholes, and not the charming kind, and you can't see Matthew Goode's handsome face because he's all worn out and beardy and also an asshole who parks his car like it's a bike and he's a twelve-year-old boy. Just, wherever it lands when he hops out of it. I didn't find Goode entirely convincing as either worn out or beardy an asshole, though, as there's just something too impish about him to pull either of those things off. Like that was really a job for David Tennant. Which the show kept reminding me of by naming Goode's partner "Hardy." Have none of these people seen Broadchurch? Goode was rather good at the out-of-control violence though, which made that extra uncomfortable. (It's a very violent show. Shootings, stabbings, bludgeonings complete with flying bits. Police personnel are responsible for about half of it. There's also references to mental illness (OCD, PTSD, panic attacks, arachnophobia, psychopathy), life-changing injuries, some self-inflicted dentistry, enclosed spaces, and the threat of sexual violence toward a teenager.)

I got drawn into the investigation and finished the show in less time than it took me to watch the first episode, but it leans a little too heavily on "unpopular asshole (believes he) is the only one who can solve crimes!!!" Goode's boss makes him head of an entirely new cold case department just so she doesn't have to deal with him, and in case you're wondering how seriously this new department is being taken, it's run out of the basement. (Other notable departments operating out of the basement: The X-Files, Fringe, and—also starring Anna Torv—Mindhunter.)

It would have worked better for me if Goode had been able to carry the show, since he is the center of it, but, in this form, he just doesn't have the charisma of famous assholes like our modern Sherlock Holmeses (Jonny Lee Miller, Robert Downey, Jr., Hugh Laurie, and, lord help me, even Benedict Cumberbatch) or even a less famous Alec Hardy. I think the show's at its best when it takes advantage of the whole cast. Goode's eager underlings Rose and Akram were a lot more interesting to me, but since Goode's deeply incurious about both of them, they're built in the little moments. And, although I've only seen her in two things (this and Giri/Haji), I always enjoy Kelly Macdonald. At one point Goode says something gross to Macdonald, his department-mandated therapist, and I made a face and when the camera switched over to her she was making the exact same face.

The aforementioned Hardy's entire personality is "shot in the line of duty, now partially paralyzed, unable to walk, and recovering." I wanted to like him, but I was suspicious of the disability narrative they were feeding me, which was also pretty one note.

We just don't know enough about the character to judge whether his suicide attempt made sense or was just lazy, ableist writing. I suspect the latter.

Content note that is also a spoiler.

But, eventually, there is teamwork! And Goode's Morck maybe even trying to be slightly less of an asshole, or at least a better father. His lodger Martin adds in some, like, nonconsensual found family vibes that I dug, as Morck doesn't want Martin's opinion, but he's getting it anyway because Martin's part of their family unit whether Morck wants him to be or not.

Watch Department Q if you like: investigations, gritty procedurals, Scottish accents, Matthew Goode, hyperbaric chambers.