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brightknightie) wrote2014-06-29 09:37 pm
brightknightie) wrote2014-06-29 09:37 pm
Entry tags:
Rewatched "Black Buddha, Part 1" (s3e01)
Over a leisurely dinner tonight, eaten in my comfy chair before the 40" television that I purchased late last summer (replacing my 15-year-old 13"), I watched "Black Buddha, Part 1" straight through, all the way through, even the Vudu scenes, for what may be the first time in years. I'm afraid that I generally dip in and out of third season for canon references (and Urs) only; it's first season that I rewatch endlessly for sheer joy in the stories and characters. Tonight, I wavered between aching nostalgia for how good the episode seemed to me the very first time that I saw it, on the USA network, before I knew better (so to speak), and how, now, still... third season hurts. (Good golly, Mr. Parriot! Poke, poke, poke. So many lines, pokes! at your characters, at us, at yourself... if only you hadn't been the one to write/rewrite/dictate the season premiere and finale.)
That all aside, this is the very first time that I've ever seen BB1 on such a large screen, and wow! so many details of props, costuming and sets are visible at this scale! Amazing! I can distinguish individual tattoos on the Raven patrons! (Look down that woman's blouse. Is it a serpent or a dragon?) Some prompts and sets that looked entirely real on a small screen are obviously mock-ups at this size, but it only makes FK look the more like stage theater, an implication that happily emphasizes the actors' good work.
At this size, I noticed something for the very first time that probably the rest of you have known all along. Gillian Vanderburgh, the woman who plays Karen, the murdered flight attendant in BB1, is the same person who portrayed Marilyn, the murdered doctor in first-season's "Last Act." Neat! Usually, FK recycled actors between flashbacks and the present, lending weight to reincarnation constructions; it's a more select company that plays multiple roles in the same time period. ;-)
Unrelated to size, I must note one more time that it's either significant or ludicrous that the Inca questions Tracy in a language she very probably doesn't speak. (Either he meant his words for another listener, presumably Vachon, or he really wasn't interested in gaining answers, or he was operating under some misinformation or stress. Or he's an idiot.) And it's amusing through and through to my proofreading heart that they fixed that subtitle (where it originally mistranslated "evaded" as "invaded") in such a way that there's now conspicuously an extra space where the extra letter originally went.
And the ambiguities of the opening "flashback" scene struck me as keenly as ever. Not only does it so very improbably begin with Erica's doll Catherine ("Last Act"), and not only does Nick wake up from it as a nightmare (rather than experiencing it as a waking flashback), a later scene (itself a waking flashback) puts him and Claire at that very same railing when she forwardly slits her wrist and offers it to him... and he takes it. It's entirely sensible to interpret that initial scene as exactly the nightmare it appears! Constructed out of a mish-mash of memory, desire and guilt (and perhaps even conjured by the cursed statue itself if Nick's interpretation that Schanke and Cohen's deaths are the action of the curse as his wish, his cure, draws close, were considered plausible). Otherwise, to interpret that Nick indeed sank his fangs into Claire's neck and murdered her, you must not only rationalize Erica's doll, you must reject the previous canon that Nick hadn't killed in a century (cf. "Cherry Blossoms") and Nick's own interpretation of his self-imposed code (cf. "Love You to Death)... and why would you want to do that?
No, wait, you don't have to tell me! I know the answers, oh people of other factions! Honest! Go ahead and interpret all the "dark" you like! :-)
I'm just saying that it makes me, personally, very happy (and happily nostalgic) to revisit, with evidence, my preferred interpretation that Nick didn't bite Claire, and that the both utterly wretched and unwatchable and yet actually clever and under-appreciated "Outside the Lines" is the one and only can't-explain-away exception to Nick's vow to not murder a human as a vampire since he murdered Sylvaine ("Love You to Death").
~laughing at myself~
I do ♥ FK. And I ♥ being a Knightie. Even in third season. :-) I wonder whether I can fit in "The Black Buddha, Part 2" before bed?
That all aside, this is the very first time that I've ever seen BB1 on such a large screen, and wow! so many details of props, costuming and sets are visible at this scale! Amazing! I can distinguish individual tattoos on the Raven patrons! (Look down that woman's blouse. Is it a serpent or a dragon?) Some prompts and sets that looked entirely real on a small screen are obviously mock-ups at this size, but it only makes FK look the more like stage theater, an implication that happily emphasizes the actors' good work.
At this size, I noticed something for the very first time that probably the rest of you have known all along. Gillian Vanderburgh, the woman who plays Karen, the murdered flight attendant in BB1, is the same person who portrayed Marilyn, the murdered doctor in first-season's "Last Act." Neat! Usually, FK recycled actors between flashbacks and the present, lending weight to reincarnation constructions; it's a more select company that plays multiple roles in the same time period. ;-)
Unrelated to size, I must note one more time that it's either significant or ludicrous that the Inca questions Tracy in a language she very probably doesn't speak. (Either he meant his words for another listener, presumably Vachon, or he really wasn't interested in gaining answers, or he was operating under some misinformation or stress. Or he's an idiot.) And it's amusing through and through to my proofreading heart that they fixed that subtitle (where it originally mistranslated "evaded" as "invaded") in such a way that there's now conspicuously an extra space where the extra letter originally went.
And the ambiguities of the opening "flashback" scene struck me as keenly as ever. Not only does it so very improbably begin with Erica's doll Catherine ("Last Act"), and not only does Nick wake up from it as a nightmare (rather than experiencing it as a waking flashback), a later scene (itself a waking flashback) puts him and Claire at that very same railing when she forwardly slits her wrist and offers it to him... and he takes it. It's entirely sensible to interpret that initial scene as exactly the nightmare it appears! Constructed out of a mish-mash of memory, desire and guilt (and perhaps even conjured by the cursed statue itself if Nick's interpretation that Schanke and Cohen's deaths are the action of the curse as his wish, his cure, draws close, were considered plausible). Otherwise, to interpret that Nick indeed sank his fangs into Claire's neck and murdered her, you must not only rationalize Erica's doll, you must reject the previous canon that Nick hadn't killed in a century (cf. "Cherry Blossoms") and Nick's own interpretation of his self-imposed code (cf. "Love You to Death)... and why would you want to do that?
No, wait, you don't have to tell me! I know the answers, oh people of other factions! Honest! Go ahead and interpret all the "dark" you like! :-)
I'm just saying that it makes me, personally, very happy (and happily nostalgic) to revisit, with evidence, my preferred interpretation that Nick didn't bite Claire, and that the both utterly wretched and unwatchable and yet actually clever and under-appreciated "Outside the Lines" is the one and only can't-explain-away exception to Nick's vow to not murder a human as a vampire since he murdered Sylvaine ("Love You to Death").
~laughing at myself~
I do ♥ FK. And I ♥ being a Knightie. Even in third season. :-) I wonder whether I can fit in "The Black Buddha, Part 2" before bed?