WandaVision 1x07
Feb. 24th, 2021 07:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jedi_of_urth posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
tori_reviewsYou will note my complete lack of surprise.
WandaVision 1x07
I’m not even sure I have anything to say about most of what’s in this episode, so I’m going to start by talking about something the ‘previously on’ segment reminded me of. So, they had Monica say that if Wanda is the problem Wanda must be the solution. And it started me off on a bad foot with the episode because the show itself doesn’t seem to know that; this should have been Wanda’s problem and her solution, not this grafted on plot in the real world.
Plus it’s actually kind of ironic that Monica identified her and her plot as a bad move with that line. If she’s wrong (and she is…ish), then one of her big moments of standing up people insisting that she knows what she’s talking about, was based a wrong assumption. If she’d right then her plot shouldn’t be here. So which is it writers? Is Monica wrong or irrelevant?
Because yet again, this show would be much better without the real world scenes. Even Darcy’s relevance to the plot until now could have been limited to what she communicated to Vision and then we’d get her coming into Westview in this episode. But I like her more if we limit her role to that, she’s not nearly as annoying here as she had been in the real world parts.
Jimmy is just a non-entity at this point, and Monica…I got nothing from her stuff this episode. It’s framed as if it’s some kind of giant breakthrough moment, and I was bored.
Even going back, I cannot take her or her mom’s legacy seriously. I’m sorry, but SHIELD already used up the MCU’s one allowed retcon to have always been there. I don’t know where SWORD fits, because it should be SHIELD or they should give us a real reason for it being SWORD. I don’t know what the Rambeau legacy is because they haven’t shown us what it could be or how we’ve never heard of it before. Literally everything they could say SWORD did for the world, was already claimed to have been done by SHIELD, even at the movie level. We know that Project Pegasus was already a SHIELD group, so trying to recon SWORD into existence…well it feels like something that would be right at home in the fake world of constantly shifting backstories, not in the supposed main canon of the MCU.
And Monica’s pass through the barrier was just dumb. I’m sure I could go back and pick things up from the voice overs. But the fact would remain that in the moment they were a cacophony of noise that didn’t tell me anything. And then they ended it on Carol, which is absolutely not what it should have been, as it should have been her mom directly. And even that would have been weak, as it carries on into her meeting with Wanda; I don’t know Monica’s relationship to be mom. Even in Captain Marvel it mostly an informed attribute (in a way that’s fine for a movie where that relationship only had a few minutes of screen time and wasn’t a supposed hero’s driving motivation), and it’s even more so here. If they had taken the opportunity to really ground our understanding of that relationship it would have made everything about it feel at least a bit less contrived and needless.
I did mention this before, but I want to reflect on it a bit. The real world segments actually feel less real to me than the in-show parts. So when I’m watching Monica’s stuff I feel like I’m watching a TV show and all the baggage that comes with that; where with Wanda (and Vision) I feel like I’m watching a story that explores a character that I can care about like a person. And I feel too much (far too much) that the writers are insisting I should like Monica for whatever reason they had in mind that I should like her (either they have plans for her going forward so obviously people like her now, right? Or something a bit more…agenda driven); but with Wanda I feel like I’m allowed to make up my own mind whether to judge or sympathize with the character (and promptly conclude this wasn’t her fault in the first place). It’s why, for all that it is clearly a fake world, Westview feels more real to me that the outside world.
And I cannot stress enough how unsurprised I am about the Agnes reveal. I’m not even sure it was supposed to be that big a twist; and this episode was sure doing a fair amount of setup, by not even having her care about the magic anymore and then being creepy with the kids (one of whom notes that she’s all quiet inside). And I wouldn’t mind it not being a twist, I’d call it good foreshadowing, if I wasn’t still a little convinced it was supposed to be a surprise. Like, yeah you killed Sparky, duh, it was pretty obvious.
That said, I am glad they actually did the reveal this episode; because dragging it out even more would have served no purpose. Because as soon as Agnes walked out the take control of the Wanda-Monica fight I stopped having any doubts about Agnes being the bad guy here. If anything it was too obvious; but it wasn’t quite too obvious so I didn’t think she was there as a red herring.
I liked this episode a fair bit, though I know I’m definitely complaining. But I also didn’t like it much at all. It’s sort of a definition/scale thing. I had very little specific that I liked and a few specific things I didn’t like; but it was entertaining enough and I was generally interested in it, so I don’t know how to classify it precisely.
WandaVision 1x07
I’m not even sure I have anything to say about most of what’s in this episode, so I’m going to start by talking about something the ‘previously on’ segment reminded me of. So, they had Monica say that if Wanda is the problem Wanda must be the solution. And it started me off on a bad foot with the episode because the show itself doesn’t seem to know that; this should have been Wanda’s problem and her solution, not this grafted on plot in the real world.
Plus it’s actually kind of ironic that Monica identified her and her plot as a bad move with that line. If she’s wrong (and she is…ish), then one of her big moments of standing up people insisting that she knows what she’s talking about, was based a wrong assumption. If she’d right then her plot shouldn’t be here. So which is it writers? Is Monica wrong or irrelevant?
Because yet again, this show would be much better without the real world scenes. Even Darcy’s relevance to the plot until now could have been limited to what she communicated to Vision and then we’d get her coming into Westview in this episode. But I like her more if we limit her role to that, she’s not nearly as annoying here as she had been in the real world parts.
Jimmy is just a non-entity at this point, and Monica…I got nothing from her stuff this episode. It’s framed as if it’s some kind of giant breakthrough moment, and I was bored.
Even going back, I cannot take her or her mom’s legacy seriously. I’m sorry, but SHIELD already used up the MCU’s one allowed retcon to have always been there. I don’t know where SWORD fits, because it should be SHIELD or they should give us a real reason for it being SWORD. I don’t know what the Rambeau legacy is because they haven’t shown us what it could be or how we’ve never heard of it before. Literally everything they could say SWORD did for the world, was already claimed to have been done by SHIELD, even at the movie level. We know that Project Pegasus was already a SHIELD group, so trying to recon SWORD into existence…well it feels like something that would be right at home in the fake world of constantly shifting backstories, not in the supposed main canon of the MCU.
And Monica’s pass through the barrier was just dumb. I’m sure I could go back and pick things up from the voice overs. But the fact would remain that in the moment they were a cacophony of noise that didn’t tell me anything. And then they ended it on Carol, which is absolutely not what it should have been, as it should have been her mom directly. And even that would have been weak, as it carries on into her meeting with Wanda; I don’t know Monica’s relationship to be mom. Even in Captain Marvel it mostly an informed attribute (in a way that’s fine for a movie where that relationship only had a few minutes of screen time and wasn’t a supposed hero’s driving motivation), and it’s even more so here. If they had taken the opportunity to really ground our understanding of that relationship it would have made everything about it feel at least a bit less contrived and needless.
I did mention this before, but I want to reflect on it a bit. The real world segments actually feel less real to me than the in-show parts. So when I’m watching Monica’s stuff I feel like I’m watching a TV show and all the baggage that comes with that; where with Wanda (and Vision) I feel like I’m watching a story that explores a character that I can care about like a person. And I feel too much (far too much) that the writers are insisting I should like Monica for whatever reason they had in mind that I should like her (either they have plans for her going forward so obviously people like her now, right? Or something a bit more…agenda driven); but with Wanda I feel like I’m allowed to make up my own mind whether to judge or sympathize with the character (and promptly conclude this wasn’t her fault in the first place). It’s why, for all that it is clearly a fake world, Westview feels more real to me that the outside world.
And I cannot stress enough how unsurprised I am about the Agnes reveal. I’m not even sure it was supposed to be that big a twist; and this episode was sure doing a fair amount of setup, by not even having her care about the magic anymore and then being creepy with the kids (one of whom notes that she’s all quiet inside). And I wouldn’t mind it not being a twist, I’d call it good foreshadowing, if I wasn’t still a little convinced it was supposed to be a surprise. Like, yeah you killed Sparky, duh, it was pretty obvious.
That said, I am glad they actually did the reveal this episode; because dragging it out even more would have served no purpose. Because as soon as Agnes walked out the take control of the Wanda-Monica fight I stopped having any doubts about Agnes being the bad guy here. If anything it was too obvious; but it wasn’t quite too obvious so I didn’t think she was there as a red herring.
I liked this episode a fair bit, though I know I’m definitely complaining. But I also didn’t like it much at all. It’s sort of a definition/scale thing. I had very little specific that I liked and a few specific things I didn’t like; but it was entertaining enough and I was generally interested in it, so I don’t know how to classify it precisely.
