Watching a Pros ep - Wild Justice
Saturday, 18 July 2015 11:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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msmoat's post about Pros the other day (it's been nice to catch up on some of the interesting questions being posted about our lads recently - more of those, please! *g*) She asked What is your favorite Pros episode that other people don't like?, and although I find it very hard to answer favourite ep questions usually (many! for many different reasons!), I had an answer for this one, because I remember being so surprised to realise that other people didn't like this ep. As I said to her, I'm not sure whether people did once like it, but people nowadays don't, or whether they never did like it much and I just assumed they did because it's one of my favourites. And I thought about why I like it, for MsMoat's post, and then I thought about how I should perhaps watch it tonight - and maybe post some pics, cos it's been aaaaages since I did that... *g* So - here's some things I like about Wild Justice. *g*
1. The bit on the roof where Doyle slaps Bodie's leg as they set off across the roof! *g*
They're touching from the off - can't be bad. *g*
2. The lads training. We know they can't have exciting ops every day, and that they must train, but we don't really see that (Mixed Doubles was for a specific op). Lads off the streets! Lads in a new context!
And they're looking at each other. And smiling. *g*
3. The lads all in black... *g*
4. A more recent happiness -Michael Shipman from Gavin and Stacey Jack Crane. (Larry Lamb).
Mick was our Jack Crane!
5. Doyle in a tux - and that he borrowed it from Bodie. Doyle borrows Bodie's clothes! And the fab bowtie sequence with Cowley. Cowley getting impatient and all personal and tying Doyle's bow tie for him - at least if Doyle hadn't taken Cowley's hands away and... there's just something here, isn't there, in the way Cowley takes over and Doyle lets him. Not slashy, but... Doyle is Cowley's man, not just to put in danger, body and soul, but to look after as well. *g*
And you can't go wrong with a bit of Doyle leaning. *g*
6. The lads grinning joyfully at each other...
And on the monkey bars, above. *g*
7. Doyle's description of the lady novelist that he and Bodie allegedly work for - - totally a Pros slash fan... *vbg*
SALLY: What sort of works?
DOYLE: Bondage and romance.
SALLY: How old is she?
DOYLE: Eighty-nine. She's the wife of a vicar.
8. The bikes. Okay, this is a bit of... sort of nostalgia. My little brother rode enduros like the one Doyle rode, and I went to watch him a couple of times - I was usually on the Island for the Boxing Day enduro. (He reckons the widowmaker is do-able, btw, but he said the same as Doyle did - have to be careful not to loop the loop!)
How many photos do I have like these two?!
9. Bodie's hands all over Doyle when he wins the race. Well - obviously. *g*
10. Doyle stripping off all those muddy clothes. Well - obviously. *g*
11. Doyle is so angry that Bodie's doing the widowmaker - he's so scared and cross that he can't watch... there's got to be a reason for that, doesn't there... *g*
12. And who is it who ultimately saves the day? A strong, smart woman, not a bloke with a gun.
See? What's not to like? *vbg*
msmoat's post about Pros the other day (it's been nice to catch up on some of the interesting questions being posted about our lads recently - more of those, please! *g*) She asked What is your favorite Pros episode that other people don't like?, and although I find it very hard to answer favourite ep questions usually (many! for many different reasons!), I had an answer for this one, because I remember being so surprised to realise that other people didn't like this ep. As I said to her, I'm not sure whether people did once like it, but people nowadays don't, or whether they never did like it much and I just assumed they did because it's one of my favourites. And I thought about why I like it, for MsMoat's post, and then I thought about how I should perhaps watch it tonight - and maybe post some pics, cos it's been aaaaages since I did that... *g* So - here's some things I like about Wild Justice. *g*1. The bit on the roof where Doyle slaps Bodie's leg as they set off across the roof! *g*
They're touching from the off - can't be bad. *g*
2. The lads training. We know they can't have exciting ops every day, and that they must train, but we don't really see that (Mixed Doubles was for a specific op). Lads off the streets! Lads in a new context!
And they're looking at each other. And smiling. *g*
3. The lads all in black... *g*
4. A more recent happiness -
Mick was our Jack Crane!
5. Doyle in a tux - and that he borrowed it from Bodie. Doyle borrows Bodie's clothes! And the fab bowtie sequence with Cowley. Cowley getting impatient and all personal and tying Doyle's bow tie for him - at least if Doyle hadn't taken Cowley's hands away and... there's just something here, isn't there, in the way Cowley takes over and Doyle lets him. Not slashy, but... Doyle is Cowley's man, not just to put in danger, body and soul, but to look after as well. *g*
And you can't go wrong with a bit of Doyle leaning. *g*
6. The lads grinning joyfully at each other...
And on the monkey bars, above. *g*
7. Doyle's description of the lady novelist that he and Bodie allegedly work for - - totally a Pros slash fan... *vbg*
SALLY: What sort of works?
DOYLE: Bondage and romance.
SALLY: How old is she?
DOYLE: Eighty-nine. She's the wife of a vicar.
8. The bikes. Okay, this is a bit of... sort of nostalgia. My little brother rode enduros like the one Doyle rode, and I went to watch him a couple of times - I was usually on the Island for the Boxing Day enduro. (He reckons the widowmaker is do-able, btw, but he said the same as Doyle did - have to be careful not to loop the loop!)
How many photos do I have like these two?!
9. Bodie's hands all over Doyle when he wins the race. Well - obviously. *g*
10. Doyle stripping off all those muddy clothes. Well - obviously. *g*
11. Doyle is so angry that Bodie's doing the widowmaker - he's so scared and cross that he can't watch... there's got to be a reason for that, doesn't there... *g*
12. And who is it who ultimately saves the day? A strong, smart woman, not a bloke with a gun.
See? What's not to like? *vbg*
no subject
Date: Tuesday, 21 July 2015 11:58 pm (UTC)I know from my wording I might have given you the impression I value consistency above everything else in a Pros episode, but it's not really what I meant. I do value it, yes, especially because in a TV series I value character-driven stories (even in a fast action series) and character consistency is important to me, but I don't see minor flaws like the ones I described in the 1st part of my comment as too serious and they don't normally ruin my enjoyment of a programme. Of course I love the fact that Pros fanfic thrives on these plot holes and other 'flaws' which offer the perfect opportunity for a writer to fill in gaps, present a particular interpretation etc. but well-written fanfic can be enjoyable even when written for TV series that *do* have more consistency and fewer 'flaws' than Pros. In other words, canon being 'flawed' is not a necessary condition for its fanfic to be successful IMO. It all depends on the quality of the writing, in my view.
But anyway because I love (screen)writing and admire the work of a screenwriter very much (I have a background in film studies and I've worked for years in movie and TV series translation and subtitling), I tend to 'demand' from a beloved TV series that at least some episodes make sense and get a bit disappointed not so much when there are some minor plot holes or similar minor flaws, but when major issues come up which make me sit up and notice, or make me uncomfortable with my previous assumptions about a character or situation. Though of course I accept that part of life is people often behaving erratically or inconsistently, and so presumably fictional characters should too. You mentioned Cowley. I tend to like the character, even at his most abrasive and no-nonsense. I like the fact that he clearly respects and (perhaps *g*) grows fond of the lads over time, but doesn't coddle them or give them easy ways out, in fact puts them in extremely dangerous situations knowing/hoping they'll be competent and smart enough to find a way out. However, his behaviour in Operation Susie (giving away the lads' location), in Need to Know (shooting Manton to kill him when he could have just stopped him from fleeing by shooting him in the legs - plus Manton was unarmed and posed no threat), even in Blind Run (not disclosing to the lads the real purpose of their mission) leave me baffled, to say the least. Make me think Cowley thinks of himself as God and uses his top agents as if they were expendable, in a way, when he of all people should defend and protect them (as he did in The Rack, in a way, though his main intention was to defend CI5 as an organization), at least because they're expensive to replace (!).
In WJ I was so gobsmacked that he'd point a gun to Bodie's head I didn't even stop to wonder whether he'd have shot him, or if he did, whether to wound or kill Bodie. I agree with you, having thought it over, that he would not have wanted B. in jail and would have maybe shot to wound him if it came to that. But the whole finale seemed too "staged" and "theatrical", in a way. I had already some trouble believing that Bodie would behave that way during the course of the episode, plus didn't like how he treated Doyle during some of it, that I'd already exhausted my patience, and seeing Cowley threaten his top operative with a gun to his head at the end was really the last straw. So it's probably not so much Cowley appearing out-of-character, but the escalation of realism-stretching within the episode making me feel I had no more patience to follow and believe in the plot.
I admire the experimentation with style or plotlines in certain Pros episodes, even when they take the viewer out of their comfort zone, but in practice, psychological episodes like WJ cannot be IMO satisfyingly handled in just 50 minutes. In a more modern TV series this storyline would have probably been stretched over two episodes, but Pros had a stricter format and no overarching storylines were allowed, each episode having to be self-contained.
(tbc)