#liveblarg

(a liveblarg one-shot. I’ve had some drinks, so  buckle up, here we go.  spoilers ahoy.)

So, I remember liking the original version of this show as a kid.  It was basically, “What if aro/ace James Bond retired, moved to the US, and started taking cases from regular folks on a sliding scale?” The “mysterious, wise-cracking ass-kicker helps out the victim of the week” genre was *very* popular at the time, but this guy was different because he didn’t hit on the people he was helping.  Or at least that’s how I remember it.

Queen Latifa is going to play the badass who helps the downtrodden in this remake. In theory, I’m on board with that because I’m a sucker for mystery/action hybrids, especially when the “good guys” are not cops. But this is CBS, and I am not exactly confident in their willingness to handle storylines about the various ways in which the system fails people who aren’t rich/white enough.

First things first:  “Aunt Vi” (Lorraine Toussaint) should absolutely be Latifa’s wife, not the generic platonic relative who lives in her unreasonably gigantic, gorgeous house. sigh, CBS gotta CBS?  Our hero’s also got a generically sassy-yet-bland teenage daughter and a so-far-offscreen ex-husband (because she’s STRAIGHT. super-duper-hetero. just sayin. in case you were wondering. #cbs) who’s about to get remarried.  blah blah.  

Latifa just quit her international ass-kicking CIA job because she’s disillusioned (her family thinks she worked for a “charity” that flew her all over the world? uh-huh). Mr. Big from Sex in the City is apparently her ex-CIA friend/handler who still has tons of connections, but she’s not interested in joining Big’s private security firm, even though the money is apparently great, because she cares about people.  How does her family think she afforded that house on a non-profit salary? Maybe Aunt Vi is loaded? Or maybe the ex-husband is/was? (#future plot point)

Our case of the day is a girl who works at a diner and gets high-tech framed for a murder in the alley. There’s two NYPD detectives -- one seems sympathetic, his partner less so. Is she in cahooties w/ the bad guys? LETS FIND OUT (edit to follow up:  no. in fact, she’s so unimportant that she’s not even in the imdb credits, despite having a speaking role??)

OOH, Latifa (whose name is Robin McSomething) has ex-CIA friends!  A petite sniper who runs a bar in midtown while hustling douchey wall street types at darts and a hipster hacker played by Adam Goldberg. I guess we’ll let the “you know the hacker is awesome because he’s got a 10-foot-wide monitor in his basement nerd-lair” thing go?

the whole “she’s gotta balance family bullshit with saving a random innocent person!” concept isn’t exactly new ground, but I am on board with the person doing the brilliant deducing and unrealistic action-hero stuff being a middle-aged black woman who isn’t skinny. I’m inclined to check out next week’s episode.

I want an entire show just about Cheery and Angua.  

I keep feeling like they chopped up these episodes to make all the commercials fit in a 1-hour timeslot.  the pacing in and out of the commercial breaks feels jarring and amateurish, and it feels like the editors sliced out chunks of the action sequences.  lots of scenes feel weirdly disjointed and choppy, but then other moments are totally fine.  

and we’re wrapping up the end of ep 2.  Vetinari has pumped up Vimes’ self-worth (I don’t care), Vimes decides to pump up Strapping Ass (I actively disagree), and then gives a really terrible speech about how he chose not to save a man hanging from a ledge, and that was better than actively throwing him off of it.  

WOW.  “It’s not like goblins can actually feel pain”  what the fuck.

aaaand some cryptic bullshit by blast-from-the-past, and we’ve made it to the end of ep 2.  

Strapping Ass is the reason why RockDude is dead, and he isn’t even a little apologetic about it.  “I was trying to help.”  Help whom?  The only other white guy--only other person who’s “really human”--on the team?  <sigh>

Lady Sybil is some sort of ass-kicking aristocratic vigilante, with that whole “secret closet full of fancy weapons” thing. They’re setting her up to be the cliche of the “strong, badass woman who definitely doesn’t need to be saved by anyone but her (male) love interest”, and based on the number of scenes they’ve had in these two episodes, I’m guessing that’s Vimes, even though he looks old enough to be her dad.  How utterly unexpected.  I’m just going to call her Batwoman from now on.  

OH, hey!  A dragon!  that’s apparently being driven by bad-guy-from-the-past, via the red book and some self-mutilation via magic.  apparently it hurts. bye, dragon!  that was a fun 30 seconds.

ugh.  so Strapping Ass, who has been here for all of one day, is suddenly in charge of the dragon/book investigation.  Even though every decision he’s made in the line of duty so far has been bad, wrong, illegal, and/or got a coworker killed.

they could keep the exact same plot but tell it from the pov of the teeny werewolf, and it would be so much more interesting.

oh, look, I still don’t care about new guy’s emotional growth.  how impressive!  he’s decided his coworkers are *people*.  <sigh>

hmm.  I’m wondering if the BBC America edit of this show cut things out (for extra commercials or whatever).  This scene w/ Lady Sybil and Goodboy doesn’t make any sense--how did he get from her hand to the well/sewer?  Is it just bad editing, or bad re-editing?  

oh, finally some backstory on one of the other characters.  yay!   but it’s being told by one of the white guys.  boo.

ugh.  more backstory of the new guy.  I DO NOT CARE.  There are three other people in the room, and it’d be nice if they’d gotten more than 15 seconds each to explain where they come from.  But hey, they’re just sketches, I guess.

so far, one POC (former Watch Captain) is dead, killed by the other POC, who is being set up as the bad guy.  HMM.

But the tall transwoman and the tiny butch seem cool (except the random pigeon murder as her introduction).