As the TMNT franchise approached its fifteenth year, it seemed as if there wasn’t all that much to celebrate.  The first cartoon was over.  Attempts at a fourth film had long since been abandoned.  Mirage wasn’t producing any new material, and Image series, lasted only twenty-three issues.  The turtles had returned to television in 1997, in the live-action Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation,  but that only lasted one season and appears to have little to recommend it.  It also didn’t feature April, which is why it doesn’t factor here.

If this fall into semi-obscurity had one benefit, is that it allowed Peter Laird, now older, more media-savvy, and completely in charge of the turtles, to have a greater say in what his characters should look and act like.  In 2001, the turtles returned in a very low-profile way, as Mirage Studios released the first issue of  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles‘ fourth volume, with Laird as writer and Jim Lawson as artist.   Ignoring the stories told in the Image run, he moved the action forward more than a decade, showing the turtles as adults.  It would be the only regular turtles fans would get until 2002, when a company called 4Kids entered the scene.

Note: If you can help fill in the gaps in the data–the artist for the Palladium April image (which I think may have been by the Paulo Parentes Studio) and the year for the CGI pilot, for example–it’d be much appreciated.

Part 1.

Part 2.

Part 3.

TMNT Vol. 3 #6 (January 1997). Pencils by Frank Fosco. While the third volume of the TMNT ostensibly continued the story of the Mirage turtles, if features a drastically different feel from its predecessors. Thank of any mid-nineties Image comic, and you have an idea of what this book is like.

TMNT Vol. 3 #6 (January 1997). Pencils by Frank Fosco, who drew all twenty-tree issues of the series.

Art for the unreleased TMNT & Other  Strangeness (1997). Palladium first designed a TMNT role-playing game in 1985, back when the franchise was barely a franchise. Several expansions were released over the years, with diminishing returns.

TMNT (Vol. 3) #12 (December 1997). Pencils by Frank Fosco.

TMNT (Vol. 3) #17 (Sept. 1997). Pencils by Frank Fosco.

TMNT (Vol. 3) #23 (October 1999). Pencils by Frank Fosco.

TMNT Pilot Reel. Animation by Rainbow Studios. After The Next Mutation, several attempts were made to return the turtles to television. This was part of a five-minute demo produced to try and garner interest in a return. As we know, it did not succeed.  ETA: The reel can be seen here.

In 2001, Warner Brothers Animation began pre-production work on a TMNT series that never came to light, one which included designs very inspired by the original comics, along with some rather drastic departures.

Kids WB April, 3rd Rough (2001).

TMNT (Vol. 4) #1 (December 2001) Pencils by Jim Lawson.

TMNT (Vol. 4) #3 (April 2002). Pencils by Jim Lawson.

TMNT (Vol. 4) #3 (April 2002). Pencils by Jim Lawson. This is actually Shadow, who in this is series is now both a teenager and a main character.

TMNT (Vol. 4) #7 (December 2002). Pencils by Jim Lawson.

From the very beginning, the most important question this latest iteration of the Spider-Man story had to answer was: why? With the Sam Raimi films still fresh in people’s minds, why did we need another version of the origin, and the Green Goblin, and Peter Parker’s romantic woes? The producers’ argument, as seen in the Amazing Spider-Man, is that this new version would allow us to see things we had not seen before: Gwen Stacy as the primary female character; George Stacy, who in the original books had been a rather prominent character for years; mechanical web-shooters, which many consider important for reasons I’ve never found entirely convincing; rogues not seen on the big screen before; an emphasis on Peter’s father; and some new actors who were just as good if not better than the ones we’d left behind.

Did it succeed? Not entirely, but enough to keep me sanguine despite  the fact that I’d seen large swaths of the film before. It helped that the producers had the always-awesome Emma Stone as their female lead, backed by writing that gave her plenty of smarts and agency.If producers managed to maintain that level of quality for a second, inherently less derivative film, then there was a good chance that we’d get a humdinger of a sequel.

Boy, this film feels really, really disposable.

Spider-Man has never been quite at home in film. The comic book has always been a soap opera, following the many, many characters month in and month out, which is a tricky thing to translate into a couple of hours of film. Amazing Spider-Man 2 does its best to replicate that feeling, with a bunch of different characters and mini-arcs, but in the end, none of those manage to congeal into anything truly satisfying.

Electro is the primary villain here, and an effort is made to humanize him before his turn to villainy. Jamie Foxx is tasked with turning Max Dillon into yet another iteration of the socially awkward nerd, one defined by his devotion to Spider-Man, a task the actor succeeds in admirably despite problematic material. Things go awry when an accident causes Dillon to gain electricity-based powers, and even more so when a confrontation with Spider-Man turns the electrician’s admiration into hatred. While this story could have worked when told over months, in a medium that allowed his transformation to be told with more nuance, here, it feels overly convenient—things happen because the film needs them to happen, not because they feel particularly natural. What’s more, the film ends up being yet another story where a person whose mental profile is outside the norm becomes the super-powerful aggressor, in direct opposition to the way things actually turn out in real life. In the end, Electro’s story is one we did not need.

The film’s second villain, Harry Osborn, doesn’t fare much better As interesting as it was to see the film set aside Norman without turning into the Green Goblin, and as all right as Harry’s story got in parts, most of it could have been well served with additional space to breathe. Introducing the character and his friendship with Peter, killing of his father and establishing a life-threatening illness, having him become the Green Goblin, lose, and then have him plans for the Sinister [Unspecified Amount of Villains] was more than enough material for two films; doing all that in one film means that only about half the beats work. What’s more, nothing terribly satisfying comes from it, as this version of the Green Goblin feels purposeless: he exists solely to kill off Gwen Stacy in a manner that follows the comic books.

Also, this is the film that finally kills Gwen Stacy.

Gwen’s death has always carried singular weight in the Spider-mythos, and super-hero comic books as a whole—it’s considered by some the moment that heralded the end of the Silver Age. It has also come to define the character, much like the Phoenix defines Jean Grey, to the point where it’s the one story people expect and hope is told when the character is introduced.

That’s all sorts of fucked up, by the way.

Regardless, screen versions of Gwen usually managed to escape that fate, which is a thing I’m grateful for. While a textbook case of fridging, the original story is tied to a whole bunch of context that made that story arguably make sense in that particular instance, but not others. At the time she’d died, Gwen had been established for years, and the writers, correctly or incorrectly, felt that she’d run her course, and that killing her (and the Green Goblin who is not killed off here) would help energize a book that threatened to become stagnant. None of those factors apply to the adaptations, and most certainly don’t apply here, where Gwen was easily the best character in the film.

And yet, there she goes. One of the two female characters in the films with significant roles, and she’s dead. The one character whose major arc in the film is her attempts to maintain her agency gets—attempts that seemed to lead her to a life that did not involve a romance with Peter—is killed off for it. And why? What does it add to the story, except to give Peter more manpain? Sure, it’s a shocker to those audience members who fortunately managed to never speak to a Spider-Man fan, but given the film’s particular context, this seems like far from an acceptable reason.

Still, it’s not all a downer. The few minutes when Harry and Max work together work really well. Electro’s powers are very well represented. Gwen Stacy continues to rock: while there was an early moment when I feared that she was being turned into a passive bystander in Peter’s adventures—during the first Electro battle—those fears were assuaged by the time she began investigating Electro on her own. And I really liked seeing elements of the Spider-Man verse that the Raimi movies couldn’t make time for—I always love seeing Donald Menken. Still, the film never manages to feel essential, and given the way it ends, I’m not sure I care enough about this version of the Spider-verse to stick around for a third film.

Random Thoughts:

• I really don’t like Peter in this film a whole lot.  His behavior regarding Gwen is all sorts of problematic, and only Garfield and Stone’s fantastic chemistry saves it from becoming utterly unpalatable.  Outside of that, he’s bog-standard Spider-Man, with nothing in particular to recommend him.

• One of the more unsettling things about the film was how…untethered Peter seemed to be. Like, once he graduated, there was no real sense that his life had a status quo. We know he was taking pictures of Spider-Man, but that’s all we really get. Is he in college? Does he have a major? Is he looking to move out? Given how important Peter Parker’s life is supposed to be, this felt extremely odd, particularly since he’s promising Gwen that he’s willing to move to England to be with her. With what money, Mr. Parker?

• Paul Giamatti was unrecognizable as the Rhino, who, disappointingly, does not go by Alex O’Hirn here). While watching the credits, I was all, “Paul Giamatti was in this film?” until I realized who he’d played.

• Speaking of Rhino…guns? Really?

• This film’s interpretation of the Green Goblin’s look automatically makes the one from the first Spider-Man flick, which was okay at best, one million times better. I realize there’s reasons why the original concept from the books doesn’t translate terribly well to film, but c’mon people!

• Given the film’s dearth of female characters, I was deeply disappointed to see long-time supporting character Ashley Kafka turned into a dude for this film. It makes things like the casting of Electro feel cynical rather than encouraging, particularly since Electro himself ends up blue-skinned for most of the film.

• This film continued the subplot about Peter’s father.  I did not care about the subplot about Peter’s father.

The stars aligned in 2002, and production began on a second Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated series.  Two things stood about about this effort at the time: 1) it would actually come to fruition,  and 2) unlike the first cartoon, it planned to take many of its characters and storytelling beats directly from the Mirage comic books.

If there ever was an opportunity for April to appear with something resembling the look she sported through most of Mirage Volume 1–or as a Woman of Color, period–this was it.  While the producers seemed to  feel no particular need to adhere to characters’ comic book looks–as best seen in the Shredder, who now sports a full suit of armor–they also seemed to feel a certain commitment to racial diversity in the show, if the reversal of Baxter Stockman’s whitewashing and the various original characters of color introduced in that first season are any indication.  If, like other people in the past, the showrunners saw Mirage April as a woman of color,  it seems it seems reasonable to surmise that they would have at  least been amenable to at least discussing the idea of depicting their version of our favorite gal-pal in a similar manner.  The fact that the primary audience for this show would likely not be familiar with April from the original cartoon meant they could have done so with a minimum of  uproar.

And yet, this didn’t happen, and there are several possible reasons why.   It may be that, like many people, the producers at 4Kids never interpreted April as being anything other than a white woman.  It might be that Peter Laird, who definitively sees April as a white woman, and who had something akin to a veto power when it came to the show, stepped in and insisted that the TV version follow suit–which frankly, I’m kind of  okay with, being as he helped create her and all.  It might be that the decision was made by people outside the creative circle.  Or, in what seems to me the most unlikely possibility, given the show’s output, they might have interpreted Mirage April as a woman of color and consciously decided to whitewash her without requiring any additional input.  I’ve asked Laird for context, but, unfortunately, he turned out to be less than forthcoming.  Still, no matter the details, in the end, another generation grew up knowing that April O’Neil is white, making future interpretations where she isn’t even less likely.

Buoyed by the new interest in the turtles brought about by the cartoon and its merchandising tie-ins, Mirage decided to publish a second iteration of Tales of the TMNT as a companion to the Laird / Lawson TMNT Vol. 4.  The second book, an anthology title featuring the work of several creators, hearkened back to the guest creator era, as various people put their stamp on the turtles, including some new faces like Tristan Huw Jones, who attempted to weave together several disparate plot strands into his own mini-universe within the universe.  It was also the first time since 1992 that we’d see how Mirage April looked under different artists.

Hollywood loves a remake, and eventually a fourth TMNT film, titled simply TMNT and serving as a pseudo-sequel to the first three, was produced and released.  Done entirely in CGI, it featured an April that was less Lois Lane and more Lara Croft, and was voiced by Sarah Michelle Gellar.  While a success in some respects, it was not successful enough to merit follow-ups.  It did, however, influence the larger turtles-verse, as various other incarnations would begin to draw from its visuals.

In 2009, Peter Laird, by then sole owner of the franchise, decided to sell the turtles to Viacom, and specifically, Nickelodeon.  A new era was set to begin.

Part 1.

Part 2.

Part 3.

Part 4.

April O’Neil Character Model (Seasons 1-5), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003).  While April had several “casual” outfits, this was the first and thus the one that appeared in her artwork and tie-ins.  Why they made such a key design include a belly shirt / crop top, I’ve never really understood, since it never really quite felt consistent with the character, and its prominence made for some awkwardness, such as the moment when she wore it to her job as a lab assistant.

TMNT (2003) Episode 2.21: “April’s Artifact” (May 1, 2004). Normally, shredding a female character’s clothes and forcing her to take a mudbath means that producers are pandering to the male gaze. This being 4Kids, however, it feels more half-hearted than anything else.  I wish the sticks had been part of her regular design, though, or had appeared more often.

TMNT (Vol. 4) # 14 (Feb. 2004). Pencils by Jim Lawson. April’s lack of hair, by the way, is due to having had it shaved off in preparation for a medical procedure. It is now growing back.  The other woman is, of course, Renet.

TMNT (Vol. 4) #22 (June 2005) Cover. Art by Michael Dooney.  The photos and drawings here are meant to be April at several stages of her life.

TMNT (Vol. 4) #22 (June 2005). Pencils by Jim Lawson. This issue gave us our first and only look at April and Robyn’s unnamed mother, seen here.

TMNT (Vol. 4) #22 (June 2005). Pencils by Jim Lawson.

Some alternate looks for April from the 4Kids cartoon. The second one comes from “Same as it Never Was”, the series’ bad future episode, while the last one comes from the show’s sixth season, Fast Forward, in which characters character designs were altered to be flatter-looking and more angular.  I also find it rather funny how the design where the bun would make most sense is the one where she doesn’t sport it.

Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #22 (April 2006). Pencils by Scott Cohn.

Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #27 (Sept. 2006) Cover. Art by Chris Allan.  This issue, dealing with the aftermath of Volume 4 #22, is the only issue in the volume to focus exclusively on her, which is disappointing.

Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #27 (Sept. 2006) Frontispiece. Art by Michael Dooney.  April’s costume here is a reference to the events of volume 4, in which she briefly dons a version of the costume once used by super-hero Nobody after learning her origin.

Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #27 (Sept. 2006). Art by Chris Allan, whose Mirage April, it turns out, is pretty much identical to his Archie April.

Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #31 (Jan. 2007). Pencils by Andrés Ponce.

TMNT Film (2007).  April sports a variety of looks in the film, and this AMV does a good job of showcasing them. I hadn’t noticed until I first saw the CGI pilot a few weeks back, but one can pretty much draw a straight line from that version of the character to this one.  Just change the art style to make her adorable, and presto.

TMNT Movie Prequel: April (March 2007) cover. Art by Santiago Bou, who manages to make an already questionable outfit look even worse by adding boob socks.

TMNT Movie Prequel: April (March 2007). Pencils by Andrés Ponce. In addition to the usual comic book adaptation of the film, Mirage released  five prequel issues, each focusing on an individual character and showcasing how they got to where they were at the beginning of the film.

Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #43 (Feb. 2008) cover. Pencils by Jim Lawson.  This is the issue where Casey and April get engaged.  The actual wedding has not been shown.

April O’Neil Character Model, TMNT: Back to the Sewer (A.K.A. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles season 7) (2008).  Like most major characters, April’s design got tweaked to better resemble her film design.  The most obvious change is in the hair color; similar shades would later be used in the IDW and Nick versions of the character.

Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #55 (Feb. 2009). Pencils by Jim Lawson. The April robot shown here is meant as a call-back to the look from her very first appearance.

TMNT (2003)  Episode 7.13/ TMNT: Back to the Sewer Episode 1.13: “Wedding Bells and Bytes” (Feb. 28, 2009). The last regular episode of the series married off April to Casey Jones. I’m including the dress she wore because it’s pretty.

Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #56 (March 2009). Art by Paul Harmon, who’s shading was reminiscent of volume one in a way that the art in the book at the time rarely was.

TMNT Smash-Up (September 22, 2009) “Cover”. Pencils by Jim Lawson. Image obtained from TMNT Entity. This was a mini-comic included with copies of the videogame of the same name. Like with the game, the versions of the characters seen here are not meant to represent any single incarnation of the turtles.

TMNT Smash-Up (September 22, 2009). Pencils by Jim Lawson. …that said, the videogame itself largely drew from the designs introduced in the recent film, while this mini-comic opted for something entirely different.

Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #65 (Dec. 2009). Pencils by Dan Berger.

Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #65 (Feb. 2010). Pencils by Darío Brizuela.

Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 2) #68 (March 2010). Pencils by Jim Lawson.

TMNT (Vol. 4) #31 (Oct. 2010).  Pencils by Jim Lawson.

(With special thanks to Daggerpen.)

When the people behind Arrow cast The Killing’s Bex Taylor-Klaus on a recurring basis as The Canary’s best friend and confidant Sin, comic book fans called foul. The comic book character that inspired Taylor-Klaus’s role, Dinah Lance’s adopted daughter, had been a woman of color, born and raised in a village in Asia. The TV character was not.

Bex Taylor-Klaus.  Cute?  Yes.   Fantastic in the role?  Sure.  Asian?  Not even a little bit.

If recent events are any indication, it may appear that the producers heard the criticism, but did not listen.

The twentieth episode of the second season, “Seeing Red”, features a series of flashbacks in which it is revealed that Oliver was, at one time, slated to become a father. While we briefly meet the mother-to-be—played by Anna Hopkins—the focus of the subplot is on how this affects Moira, who, in order to “protect” her son, coerces the pregnant woman to lie to Oliver about a miscarriage and skip town, meaning that Oliver may have a child that he does not know about. While the story can easily stand on its own without additional development—it’s really not about the woman at all, but rather about Moira, as evidenced by the fact that the mother-to-be doesn’t get a name—the scene carries additional significance to people familiar with Green Arrow, who know that children Oliver Queen doesn’t know about form a very important of the comic book’s canon.

While the comic book version of Oliver had several of these children he did not initially know about, Connor Hawke, introduced in 1993, is the most important one, due to the fact that he eventually took over his father’s identity and book. It would be he who’d be foremost in the mind of any Green Arrow fan who watched the episode, which brings us to problem number one. The son of the white Oliver and the half-Black, half-Korean Sandra Hawke, Connor is one of the DC Universe’s most prominent multiracial characters . “Seeing Red”’s mother-to-be was not played by half-Black, half-Asian actress, or a Woman of Color of any sort.

At left: Sandra “Moonday” Connor. At right: Anna Hopkins, who plays a character very reminiscent of Sandra, but who is very specifically unnamed in the episode.

If we go solely by the information given on the episode itself, there’s no way to know if the mother-to-be appearing in the episode was meant to be Sandra Hawke. The woman is given no qualities other than being pregnant and living in Central City, which would, in theory, make her any one of the women Oliver has impregnated in the comic books, or even a wholly original character. Absent any additional information—particularly, a name—proving that whitewashing occurred is impossible.

Problem two: Additional information exists.

“The last scene where he tells her that Sandra lost the baby. In the flashback, the ‘my beautiful boy’ line from the pilot. I mean, it’s a beautiful way that Marc wrote that in. And I already knew that when I read it. But it’s not until I was actually filming it did Stephen and I started to really feel the depth of that, because it takes you back to the pilot, the beginning of all this as actors, not only just the character stories but as actors, our developing of these characters, it takes you all the way back there.” – Susanna Thompson, TV Fanatic.com interview.

From this tidbid, one can conclude that there had been an understanding between the cast and crew that the woman in question was, indeed very specifically meant to be the show’s version of Sandra Hawke. What’s more, producers explain that the character that the subplot of Oliver’s secret baby wasn’t going to be a one-off, but rather will be developed next season. It raises a question: why, then, was the mother left unnamed? There’s little point, unless the idea is to create plausible deniability for themselves.

Names are important things in adaptations. Yes, Sara Lance’s surrogate sister would always bear a thematic resemblance to Sin the comic book character, but it’s the name that lets fans the character will be important, and gives them something to base their speculations on. Thanks to the name, the character has a leg up when it comes to appealing to viewers, and can be used to build hype in a way an non-comic book character can’t. However, it also makes proving that whitewashing occurred all too simple.

However, names are not altogether essential. If Arrow were to feature, for example, a Gotham City millionaire whose parents were killed in an alley when he was eight, you don’t need to call him Bruce Wayne for viewers to make the connection. Depending on the character, it is possible to bring in the hype without opening oneself to accusations of whitewashing. This, in fact, is what happened with Star Trek: Into Darkness. Everyone and their mother knew that the character that Benedict Cumberbatch had been hired to play was Khan before the film confirmed it when released, and this played a vital role in the film’s pre-release hype. However, because the producers remained coy about this fact until the last possible moment, it was impossible to condemn the whitewashing with the venom it deserved. “Stop whitewashing (maybe)” is a tough rallying cry to rally around, particularly since creators and apologists can rightfully say “you can’t say that for sure”. Indeed, this is what is now happening with Arrow. The whitewashing of the future Connor Hawke would normally be huge news, but for the fact that the show hasn’t actually confirmed he exists.

However, that same plausible deniability is what also allows Arrow‘s producers to fix things, if they so wished. Casting and filming for season three has not begun yet. The woman in “Seeing Red” could be recast for future appearances, as Sara Lance was, without difficulty. She could be revealed to not be Sandra Hawke after all, with a proper, biracial Sandra being introduced later on as another woman Moira bought off. However, in order for that to have any chance of happening, viewer reaction must be swift and loud and angry. They already know that what they’re doing is wrong—otherwise they wouldn’t bother to hide it—now they need to know that there will be consequences.

And yet, even if things are fixed, damage has been done. Arrow‘s record when it comes to race has been consistently spotty—lots of their characters of color end up dead or marginalized—and this does nothing to alleviate it. What’s more, if whitewashing is a sign of unexamined privilege, attempts to hide it indicate an unwillingness to actually examine it. Given that DC superheroes are supposed to stand for justice and that Green Arrow in particular, has popularly been considered the left’s superhero, seeing his show embrace regressive actions is particularly jarring.

Complaints about whitewashing can be sent to the CW’s feedback page.

—

(Note: This was originally meant to air the week after the episode aired.  Logistic considerations prevented it from appearing until now.)

Despite the obscene amount of variant covers offered by IDW for their Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 30^th Anniversary Special, there was no question which one was the coolest. Drawn by Ozzy Fernández and inked by Tony Kordos, the Heroes Haven wraparound variant cover, featuring the turtles and their allies about to do battle with the franchise’s most popular villains, was pure nostalgia porn. The Shredder, Baxter Stockman, the Technodrome, the Rat King, Casey Jones and –ing Ace Duck, all in one official image, and all in their most iconic looks? It seemed too good to be true. And it was, because lost in the shuffle was one character who most definitively should have been there : April O’Neil, the property’s most prominent female character and arguably the most iconic character in the franchise after the turtles themselves, is nowhere to be seen in the cover (*). Without her, the image felt incomplete; worse, it meant that the cover featured some twenty male characters and no women .

And so, despite being lucky enough to be present at the event where this limited-distribution cover would be first sold—Puerto Rico Comic Con—I wasn’t sure I’d get the cover. Not only was April’s absence pretty much a deal-breaker, I wasn’t too enthusiastic about having to spend twenty dollars on a book I already owned, fantastic art or not. Fortunately, I didn’t have to, as cheaper prints of the image were also available for sale—prints where April O’Neil was very much present and prominent.

Something was up.

I’d originally intended to ask the people there on Heroes Haven’s behalf—which included the artists for the cover in question, there to promote their work—just why April was absent from the cover. Now aware of the print, I had an idea of what the reason was, and a quick conversation seemed to settle it: apparently Nickelodeon, who owns the turtles and has to approve every bit of licensed art, had asked that she be removed. A post located on Fernández’s Facebook page makes the same claim.

I had my awesome print, and two new questions:

1) If the claim is true—and I have no reason to doubt that it is—why had Nickelodeon asked for April to be removed from the cover?

2) Was this the only time it had happened?

There’s reason to believe that this wasn’t a one-time deal.  A few weeks back, IDW released the cover image for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures Volume 8, the latest in their trade paperback collection of the comic book series originally published by Archie during the early nineties. Again, April was nowhere to be seen, despite the fact that the stories collected in the book all prominently featured her. The absence was glaring enough that it made me think back to previous covers, only to remember, rather effortlessly, that she had, in fact, been absent from all of them (**). One of the most well-known characters in the franchise, and one who was more prominent in the collected stories than many of the (male) characters who did show up in the covers, and she appeared to have been neglected multiple times by multiple artists. And while the reason for April’s absence is self-evident in some cases—either she wasn’t  prominent in the stories collected in the book, such as with Volumes 2 and 3, or the scene depicted in the cover didn’t include April in the original story, such as with Volumes 1 and 7—no single explanation that I could see existed to explain all the absences.   The cover for Volume 5, for example, depicts a scene from the book which originally featured April along with the turtles; why, then, isn’t she there in the reproduction?

Before Puerto Rico Comic Con, it was impossible to say why this was the case: there were too many potential whats, whos and whys, and too little available information. Is April’s continued absence the result of a mandate, or had different artists with different biases all independently realized that they didn’t care to feature her in their covers?  Had April just been unlucky enough to fall victim to a series of what are essentially coincidences?  Now, at least, some light has been shed on the situation—enough to make it clear that we need more.

—

(*) It’s also worth noting that April is not just absent from the Special’s covers; she is absent from the covers, absent from the stories, and absent from the pin-ups. If the book were a person’s first taste of the TMNT, that person would have no idea that a character called April O’Neil ever existed, or that she is nearly as old as the turtles, being introduced in the very second issue of the original comic book.

(**) She’s not the only one, as so far only one of the series’ handful of prominent female characters has ever appeared in a collection cover.  See if you can spot her.

My third Four Job Fiesta, and my second victory.  This time, I attempted a Random Run–you’re given jobs taken from a pool of all job choices, instead of  just newly-available jobs–and while I enjoyed last year’s team more, this particular combination made the end game far less painful.

Main strategy: turning everyone into a Hermes Shoes-wearing Blue Mage, meaning that I could recover from any setbacks more or less painlessly.

Krile, somewhat surprisingly, turned out my most reliable attacker. The Gaia command apparently only ever activates Wind Slash when used against Exdeath, and while it does relatively little damage– < 1000–it’s consistent, and works against all segments.  While the Gaia Bell is less consistent, its higher damage output when it does work makes it a good choice as well.

Red Mages confer precisely one advantage in the Four Job Fiesta: being able to revive two fallen characters in a turn.  Fortunately, I managed to level up the Chicken Knife to its maximum capacity (Magic Pots are super-useful for this) which means I was semi-reliably doing 2000+ damage per turn with Faris, at least until…

Grand Cross left my character with an Old Status Effect.  It was during this battle that I realized two things: 1) the stat decreases remain even after you return your character to normal, and 2) they set in  *fast*, meaning that even after getting rid of the status effect almost immediately–by turning Faris into a suicide bomber–she eventually had nothing to offer.  Fortunately, this only happened late in the battle. So two advantages. 

Things I learned while fighting Exdeath: the Wonder Wand‘s spells aren’t entirely random–I got the same sequence of spells during my two battles with Exdeath–and…

the Magic Lamp, contrary to what I’d believed, is not a one-use item, but rather cycles through the list of summoned monsters in an apparently predictable manner–very useful, particularly since Lenna had no real viable offensive options and Odin reliably does a one-hit-kill to one of Exdeath’s segments.  Also, double-casting Libra is super-useful later in the battle, since it helps prevent the doomsday scenario where you’re left fighting only one Exdeath segment.

Poor, simple Percy.  In the end, his only contribution was his high HP, which meant that he was consistently the one in charge of healing the others.

Still, I’m grateful for getting Monk.  Even though the job only grows less useful as the game goes along, it does well enough during the first half of the game to make it a not-bad first job.

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The year 2009 brought about a seismic shift to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: after twenty-five years as a mom-and-pop property–albeit a ridiculously successful one–the intellectual property was sold to Viacom, and more specifically Nickelodeon, an entity that would not, and did not, waste any time capitalizing upon it.  Only an entity like Nick could have been able to take a cartoon series that lasted six years and almost a hundred and fifty episodes and make it seem like a footnote in TMNT history, but that’s precisely what happened; with the turtles once again in comic book stores, tv screens and movie theaters, the last few years have been like 1991 all over again.

However, this is not, in fact, 1991, a time when Eastman and Laird were willing, if not always happy, to let almost anyone play with their toys: Nickelodeon appears to keep the turtles on a much shorter leash.  Even when characters like Karai get radically reinvented, it feels like a boundary exists; the turtles must not pass this point.  They can’t be radical, just Radical (TM).  Therefore it is not surprising to see that April is once again and three times over, a white woman.

More interesting for the purposes of this series is the fact that IDW Publishing’s license to create and publish TMNT books gave them the ability to reprint the old Mirage and Archie material, and that the company has thus been making books that were out of print for decades available once again.  More interesting still, the reprinted Mirage material, much of it originally in black and white, is being recolored, meaning that various colorists have been tasked with looking at the various looks of April O’Neil and drawing conclusions about  just what it was the original creators intended, and deciding whether or not they’ll stick to that original intent.

So yeah, lots to cover here.  One note before we begin, though: these images are organized in more or less chronological order, and while that’s easy enough to establish with the books, I’ve had to rely on some educated guesswork when it comes to the images relating to the cartoon and film.  So there’s that.

Part 1.

Part 2.

Part 3.

Part 4.

Part 5.

Part 6.

TMNT (Vol. 6) #1 (August 24, 2011). Pencils by Dan Duncan, colors by Ronda Pattison. The first of our three new April’s makes her first appearance, and she looks, for all intents and purposes, like the character design from the 2007 film and Back to the Sewer, adapted to Duncan’s stylistic sensibilities.  Which is fine, if not much more.

Character studies for TMNT (2012)’s version of April. Art, I believe, by Ciro Nieli. The image has been taken from TMNT: The Ultimate Visual History, where by far the funniest bit is the caption in the lower left corner.  I will say, though, that commitment to whiteness aside– preordained or not–these all look fantastic.

Cover for TMNT: The Ultimate Collection Vol. 1 (January 10, 2012). Art by Kevin Eastman, drawing Mirage April for the first time in more than a decade, at least in an official capacity.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, it resembles the very first version of April.

Preliminary designs for the Nick Cartoon.

Cover for TMNT: The Ultimate Collection Vol. 2 (April 3, 2012). Art by Kevin Eastman, whose depiction of April bears little resemblance to the character as seen in the actual book interior, who at this point has entered her post-makeover phase.

April expression sheet for Nick cartoon.

TMNT #2 colored reprint, as seen in TMNT Color Classics #2 (June 13, 2012) and Collected in TMNT: The Works Volume 1.  Colored by Tom Smith’s Scorpion Studios.

TMNT (Vol. 1)#3 colored reprint, as seen in TMNT Color Classics #3 (July 11, 2012) and collected in TMNT: The Works Volume 1. Colored by Tom Smith’s Scorpion Studios.

TMNT (Vol. 1) #3 colored reprint, as seen in TMNT Color Classics #3 (July 11, 2012) and Collected in TMNT: The Works Volume 1. Colored by Tom Smith’s Scorpion Studios.

Final April design for the Nick TMNT Cartoon

TMNT (Vol. 1) #13 recolored reprint, as seen in TMNT Classics Vol. 1 (August 15, 2012). Colored by Digikore Design Limited.

TMNT Microseries: April O’Neil (August 29, 2012) cover.  Art by David Petersen.  April headlines a book for the first time in almost twenty years, and it certainly looks great.

TMNT Microseries: April O’Neil (August 29, 2012). Art by Marley Zarcone.

TMNT Microseries: April O’Neil (August 29, 2012) bonus artwork. Art by Marley Zarcone.

TMNT Microseries: April O’Neil (August 29, 2012) bonus artwork. Art by Marley Zarcone.

TMNT #4 colored reprint, as seen in TMNT Color Classics #4 (September 5, 2012) and collected in TMNT: The Works Volume 1. Colored by Tom Smith’s Scorpion Studios.

Image from “Rise of the Turtles”, Part Two (September 29, 2012)

TMNT #6 colored reprint, as seen in TMNT Color Classics #6 (November 7, 2012) and collected in TMNT: The Works Volume 1. Colored by Tom Smith’s Scorpion Studios.

Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 1) #1 recolored reprint, as seen in Tales of the TMNT Collection Vol. 1 (December 5, 2012).

Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 1) #3 recolored reprint, as seen in Tales of the TMNT Collection Vol. 1 (December 5, 2012).  Pencils by Jim Lawson.

This is another picture from the same issue, which I’m including not because of April, but because of another example of whitewashing with other characters.  While we don’t learn enough about Hadji in his two appearances to learn his specific ethnicity–like many elements in the story, he is generically West / South Asian–choosing to depict him with the same hair and skin color as the white-coded King of Thieves is not a neutral decision.

TMNT (Vol. 1) #28 recolored reprint, as seen in TMNT Classics Vol. 3 (December 19, 2012). Colored by Digikore Design Limited.

TMNT (Vol. 1) #28 recolored reprint, as seen in TMNT Classics Vol. 3 (December 19, 2012). Colored by Digikore Design Limited.

TMNT (Vol. 1) #29 recolored reprint, as seen in TMNT Classics Vol. 3 (December 19, 2012). Colored by Digikore Design Limited.

Donatello #1 colored reprint, as seen in TMNT Color Classics – Microseries: Donatello (March 13, 2013) and collected in TMNT: The Works Volume 2. Pencils by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, colors by Tom Smith’s Scorpion Studios.

TMNT (Vol. 1) #32 recolored reprint, as seen in TMNT Classics Vol. 4 (April 3, 2013). Colored by Digikore Design Limited.

Leonardo #1 colored reprint, as seen in TMNT Color Classics – Microseries: Leonardo (April 10, 2013) and collected in TMNT: The Works Volume 2. Colored by Tom Smith’s Scorpion Studios.

Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 1) #5 recolored reprint, as seen in Tales of the TMNT Collection Vol. 2 (April 10, 2013).  Pencils by Jim Lawson.  The woman in the bicycle is Radical, who is Native American; the fact that she’s colored with the same skin tone as April makes me think that whomever the uncredited colorist(s) for these collections are, they’re pretty much coloring at random, which means they suck at their job.

Tales of the TMNT (Vol. 1) #7 recolored reprint, as seen in Tales of the TMNT Collection Vol. 2 (April 10, 2013).

Same as above–here’s the original image.

Image from “Karai’s Vendetta” (April 27, 2013), which I include because look how goshdarned cute they are together.

TMNT #10 colored reprint, as seen in TMNT Color Classics #10 (May 1, 2013) and collected in TMNT: The Works Volume 2. Colored by Tom Smith’s Scorpion Studios.

TMNT (Vol. 1) #11 cover, as reproduced in TMNT Color Classics (Vol. 1) #11 (June 5, 2013).  While the coloring is quite similar to the original’s, the cover has been recolored and not simply retouched.  This is most noticeable in the text for the diary pages which were in red in the original cover and in gray here.

TMNT #11 colored reprint, as seen in TMNT Color Classics #11 (June 5, 2013) and collected in TMNT: The Works Volume 2. Colored by Tom Smith’s Scorpion Studios.

TMNT (Vol. 1) #38 recolored reprint, as seen in TMNT Classics Vol. 5 (June 5, 2013). Colored by Digikore Design Limited.  Coloring aside, there is one major difference between this image and the original.  See if you can spot it.

TMNT (2014) set photos of Megan Fox as April O’Neil.

TMNT (Vol. 1) #42 recolored reprint, as seen in TMNT Classics Vol. 6 (October 30, 2013). Colored by Digikore Design Limited.

TMNT (Vol. 1)#12 colored reprint, as seen in TMNT Color Classics (Vol. 2) #1 (November 13, 2013). Colored by Tom Smith’s Scorpion Studios.

TMNT (Vol. 1)#14 colored reprint, as seen in TMNT Color Classics (Vol. 2) #2 (December 11, 2013). Colored by Tom Smith’s Scorpion Studios.

TMNT (Vol. 6) #31 (February 26, 2014).  Pencils by Ross Campbell; Colors by Ronda Pattison.  April gets a cute new ‘do in this issue, which I appreciate.

TMNT (Vol. 2) #1 recolored reprint, as seen in TMNT Classics Vol. 8 (May 14, 2014). Colored by Digikore Design Limited.

TMNT 30th Anniversary Special Heroes Haven Variant Cover (May 21, 2014). Art by Ozzy Fernández and Tony Kordos, with special input by Nickelodeon.

And with that slightly sarcastic note, we end our look at the many looks of April. In the end, I’m not sure if it accomplished anything beyond serving as an annotated historical archive, but I had fun.    If any of y’all have any question, comments, addenda, complaints, evidence, objections, or that rarest of all things, accolades and a job offer, I’d be happy to hear them.  Thank you for your time and patience.

One of the claims I often noticed made when comparing the Peta Wilson La Femme Nikita to its successor, Maggie Q’s Nikita, is that it is  both considerably more dark and more gray than its successor. After finishing season one of Femme, I have to agree with the first part of that assessment: while Nikita is a story that is fundamentally about the possibility of fighting impossible odds and winning without having to give up one’s soul—even if that soul has plenty of red in its ledger—the earlier show, or at least its first season, is about the futility of even trying. It makes for a work that is fascinating, yet unpleasant to watch, particularly since the writers and showrunners appear to have no idea of just how dark the story they’re telling actually is.

Both versions of the story, like all versions of the Nikita story, feature at its center a quasi-legitimate black-ops group which forces their “recruits”, including Nikita, to become spies and assassins—spyssassins—at gunpoint. Femme‘s is called Section One, and is, the show wants us to believe, mostly involved in legitimate counterintelligence—stopping terrorists, procuring WMD’s before they fall into The Wrong Hands, etcetera.  Nikita‘s organization, on the other hand, is called Division, and is explicitly presented as a group which, unbeknownst to the rank and file, has been almost wholly corrupted by its director, who basically uses it as a way to accrue money and power for himself. The difference in the way the organizations are portrayed are largely a result of the two different stories each series is trying to tell: La Femme Nikita is a story about Nikita when she is inside, and therefore needs her to be doing arguably good work for Section One, while Nikita is about a Nikita who is on the outside trying to bring down Division, and therefore needs the organization to be a bad guy.

(This also explains their seeming difference in competence.)

While both Section One and Division are by their nature abusive, it is Femme that really plays up this element. Whereas Nikita portrays Division as a place which despite everything could actually become a twisted sort of home, Section One, through Femme‘s freshman season, is presented as a combination prison and cult, an oppressive, demoralizing hell run by inscrutable, uncaring, and omniscient overlords and staffed by people who don’t seem to care about the obvious immorality of the enterprise, not unlike The Village from The Prisoner. Once you wake up inside the Section walls, you have two choices, accept that your life is now spent in the service of people who might kill you for any reason, or death.

Or you fight back.

And it is here where Femme‘s premise falls of the rails, for me: while Section One capably serves as an analogue for The Village, Nikita never really becomes Number 6, and the show never adequately explains why. While Nikita fundamentally disagrees with the Section’s methods and yearns to be free, she very rarely takes any substantive action against her masters, to the point where she eventually stops feeling like a victim—even when she always is—and starts feeling like an accomplice. Episodes like “Recruit”, where she recommends that a trainee that she’s supervising be canceled (the term both series use for the summary execution of a Section / Division member), or “Voices”, in which she frames a detective for murder, and then coerces him to join the Section, explicitly make it clear that her time as a prisoner / spy has led her to become scarily comfortable with the Section culture, which scares her, but never enough for her to do anything substantive against it, which is baffling.  While Nikita takes pains to establish why the title character can’t just put a bullet in Percy’s brain and why escaping Division is actually quite  difficult, Femme does nothing of the sort, which means that we’re left wondering just what the holdup is. When she finally escapes the Section in the season finale, it is in no way due to her actions, but rather because she’s left with no other choice.

So in the end, it’s hard to consistently root for Nikita. Yes, she’s a victim, but she’s far from a powerless one. While self-preservation is always a valid concern, I find it impossible to reconcile the fact that she’d continuously risk her life for the Section with the fact that she very rarely did the same for herself or for victims like her.

Now, to be fair, the show does give reasons why Nikita doesn’t take a more active role in her obtaining her freedom. However, not only are they unconvincing, they highlight some of the series’ more problematic aspects.

The first argument La Femme Nikita makes for its protagonist’s passivity—albeit indirectly—is that destroying the Section would mean jeopardizing the good work it does—the Omelas argument. However, in order for this argument to be valid, the show needs to present a case for why the bad parts of the Section—the kidnapping, torture, blackmail, coercion, murder, and utter contempt for due process—are necessary in order for it to do good, or why a more legitimate organization cannot possibly take over the Section’s duties. It never does—in fact, several episodes, like “Innocent”, where Section One is forced to rely on a completely harmless man for vital information, and finds its usual tactics to be utterly ineffective, argue the opposite, that Section One is in fact often hindered by its approach. While it is quite realistic for the higher-ups to believe that its willingness to do the wrong thing and its ability to do the alleged right thing are linked (or, what is more likely, to act like they do) this doesn’t explain why our ostensible good guy Nikita seems to feel so, which makes her motivations inexplicable. It also makes defenders’ claims that Operations is layered with shades of gray feel disingenuous, because it suggests that the good the Section may do somehow washes away its evil.

Still, the fact that Nikita doesn’t take a more active role against the Section doesn’t necessarily ruin the series. If it can’t be The Prisoner, La Femme Nikita could very well work as a spy-themed The Handmaid’s Tale, the story of a woman who passively resists an institution that would like nothing more than to grind her down, and for whom success means managing to keep her soul. However, there’s more than enough evidence to show that this is not what the creators had in mind.  We’re supposed to root for Michael, you see.  

Michael, played by Roy Dupuis, is Nikita’s handler and superior in the field, as well as the series deuteragonist and main love interest. As must inevitably happen, he and Nikita have unresolved sexual tension, and their relationship forms the emotional core of the season. This is a damn shame, because their relationship is not at all  healthy or worth rooting for.

Like most characters in the series not called Nikita, Michael appears to wholeheartedly believe in the Section’s mission, and believes that the lives they save justify the lives they take. It is Michael who acts as Nikita’s watchdog and stops her whenever she’s out of line, by whatever means possible. Michael is also the main reason why Nikita chooses to stay in the Section, a point explicitly made in the episode “Escape”, where his advances towards her are what makes Nikita decide not to join a fellow agent in his escape attempt.

Now, it is clear that Michael cares, to a degree, for Nikita: the moments when he chooses to defy the Section—in ways that from what we’ve seen involve no sort of sacrifice from his part—all occur when Nikita’s life is at stake. However, his concern is constantly portrayed as an abuser’s concern for their victim: Michael wants her alive and compliant, never actually happy. In “Escape”, his advances towards Nikita are done entirely to emotionally compromise her and prevent her from going through with the escape plan, which he later alleges was fatally flawed and doomed to failure. If he is telling the truth, then there is no reason for him to not simply tell Nikita what the situation actually is; if he is lying and the plan was solid,  then he’s just straight up emotionally torturing Nikita for kicks. In “Brainwash”, he breaks into Nikita’s apartment so that he can insist that Nikita, currently an emotional wreck, take part in a mission. Like the rest of the Section, he seems to believe that a traumatized agent is the best agent.

Now, it’d be one thing if what little Michael does comprised the entirety of what he could do, but the series consistently shows that this is not the case. Whereas Nikita’s Michael, played by Shane West, would consistently do his best to make his recruits lives more bearable, and even to escape when possible, Dupuis’ Michael consistently shows that he doesn’t give a damn. When ordered to oversee a suicide mission that involves Nikita and a handful of other agents—none of whom know that they are being sent to their deaths—Michael, who could have saved them all, only steps in to protect Nikita, leaving the others to their fate.

So in the end, we have a guy who is, from all appearances, a willing participant in torture, kidnapping, and murder, who is perfectly at ease with killing his comrades, and emotionally abuses the person we’re supposed to believe he loves. Were La Femme Nikita airing a few years later, we’d be calling him Edward Cullen, and yet the show wants us to want him to stay alive and well and together with Nikita.

No.

And so, the relationship between La Femme Nikita‘s Nikita and Michael feels less like a love story for the ages and more like a “victim falls for his abuser” narrative—which again, would be fine, if the series were to acknowledge that this is what it is. And yet, it doesn’t: when Nikita is finally free of the Section, and by implication, Michael, the show plays it as a bittersweet moment for reasons that make me question the showrunners’ moral compass.

And so, we’re left with a series with two nonsensical premises, pre-Buffy writing, negligible world-building, barely serviceable action, and a cast with precisely one (unreliably) sympathetic character. So what makes the show so darn fascinating?

Part of is precisely because it’s a pre-Buffy, pre-The Sopranos, pre-Alias show, which means it has yet to incorporate many of the tropes those shows normalized. There is no real overarching narrative to the season; while there is some continuity, the events of one episode do not directly lead to another, and Nikita’s escape in the season finale does not come across because of events in previous episodes. The recurring cast is tiny, leaving the one-shot guest stars to expand the world beyond the regulars, which feels incredibly weird, now, and for someone who was twelve when the season first began airing, it’s super-interesting.

La Femme Nikita is also a pre-9/11 show, and it shows: the writers clearly don’t believe anyone would ever be interested in geopolitics, so the baddies of the week are mostly designed to be as generic as possible–terrorist group X belongs to generic Eastern European country, whose agenda somehow threatens “the West”.  It also means that most of the baddies are white, which in turns serves to highlight just how white this show is.  While neither of these things are exactly good, they make the show far more interesting

The show’s real trump card, however, is its sense of style.  Faced with a low budget and mid-nineties special effects, the showrunners decided to go for broke on tone, atmosphere, and music.   And it works: the series feels unlike anything I remember seeing on TV–certainly different from anything that happened on Nikita.

Still, I don’t think I care to watch any more of the series. From what I’ve heard, La Femme Nikita takes some rather ridiculous turns (including one which I actually like but is apparently retconned in without  an adequate explanation) and not in a fun way, and so it doesn’t seem like it will do anything this first season didn’t already do. And that’s a shame. As interesting as the show is, I was hoping for something that would be just as obsession-worthy as Nikita, but completely different: instead I’m left wishing that it were more like it.

Alias made the current action TV landscape possible.

Part of what defines the current so-called golden age of television, particularly when it relates to the action-adventure genre, is its ability to rival film when it comes to sheer scale and craft. Before 2001, you really needed film in order to make Superman fly; Lois & Clark may have understood Superman, but it had no other choice but to suggest his more impressive super-feats, rather than actually show them. Now, with shows like The Flash, there’s no obvious sense of compromise: while there’s still a gap between what you can do in each medium, it’s much less noticeable, and mitigated by the fact that there’s a lot of things you can do with TV that you just can’t do with film. Alias, the 2001-2006 action / espionage show starring Jennifer Garner and created by J.J. Abrams, was in many ways the show that began to bridge that gap.

Compare the first season of Alias to the first season of La Femme Nikita, a show that stopped airing a scant few months before spy royalty Sydney Bristow made her debut. Sure, the earlier show could occasionally pull off some slick moments, and yet, these were these few and far between, exceptions in a show that oftentimes felt quite limited. Alias, on the other hand, often succeeded in making it feel as if those limits didn’t exist. Whereas Femme spent most of its on generic cities or inside Section One HQ, Alias took place all over the world (in a simplistic, theme-park-y, made for TV way—they sure as hell weren’t filming on China, Japan, Monaco, etc.—but still). While Nikita got into a lot of relatively-easy-to-stage shoot-outs, Sydney got into a lot of brawls, car chases, and races, requiring considerably more involved choreography from the creators.   La Femme Nikita had style and tone; Alias had that and vision. Perhaps most importantly, while La Femme Nikita was structured in a manner not dissimilar to countless other shows, with self-contained one-shot episodes and very few recurring characters, Alias had several large, overarching and interconnected storylines, involving lots of characters and events and places, giving the show a scope that at the time was unmatched and requiring far more attention and trust from viewers than was the norm at the time. Without Alias, there would have been no Lost. Without Lost to popularize the mytharc and assure TV execs that yes, viewers could deal with complex and elaborate story arcs, shows like Arrow or The Flash wouldn’t exist, at least not in their current forms.

All of this might make one think that Alias has secured its place in television history, which isn’t true. It’s not quite forgotten, but neither is it remembered the way shows like The Sopranos or Buffy the Vampire Slayer were. Part of the reason for that is that it was never a super-popular show even at its peak, but it’s also because it wasn’t consistently good: after catching people’s attention with its first season, and following it up  with a second season widely considered to be just as good if not better (although I disagree), the series then went on to crash and burn in a spectacular manner in its third, which ultimately caused it to lose most of the buzz it had built, until the series was cancelled in its fifth season after a cut episode order.

How did this happen? Part of it had to do with a chaotic production: the departure of key actors, very noticeable budget cuts, and meddling from executives wanted more straightforward narratives all helped make things more difficult for the showrunners. But honestly, I think these don’t matter a whole lot: even if they hadn’t been outside factors at play, the series was probably always going to go down the road it went in.

You see, Alias had a problem.

Okay, Alias had a million problems, from a mytharc which writes checks it can’t cash to its repetitiveness to its whiteness to its heteronormativity to its repetitiveness to its repetitiveness, but everyone who’s watched the series knows about those. This is not about those, at least not directly.

A vital part of Alias‘ central conceit is that, until the events of the pilot, Sydney Bristow (Garner), our super-spy protagonist, had no reason to believe that SD-6, a cell in a larger world-wide criminal cartel, was not a black-ops branch of the CIA like it pretended to be. This means that for seven years, the sort of missions she and her equally in-the-dark peers were assigned on were the sort of missions she imagined the CIA would do. Assassinations? Legit CIA business. Propping up friendly regimes? Perfectly acceptable. Subverting “unfriendly” democracies? All in a day’s work. And she’d be right to think that, as those are all things that the CIA does or has done.

We never see SD-6 doing any of this, however. What we get instead are endless retrieval / capture / sabotage missions, the sort that are shown to carry no larger geopolitical consequences, and can be completed without killing people or making us question the morality of SD-6 operatives we’re supposed to like—e.g.: Sydney’s partner Marcus Dixon (Carl Lumbly), or engineer Marshall Flinkman (Kevin Weisman)—and allow Sydney to don the disguises and wigs that are Alias‘ bread and butter. And that’s weird, because when Sydney Bristow joins the actual CIA, first as a double agent inside SD-6 and later in a more general capacity, those are the same sorts of missions she is asked to do there.  This wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, except that the series never really feels any need to deal with this.  SD-6 is painted as irredeemably bad despite the fact that 99 percent of its evil appears to be committed by 1 percent of its personnel, and that many of its missions appear to cause no visible direct harm. The CIA, on the other hand, is presented as is unquestionably good, with its questionable actions being portrayed as the result of a few isolated rotten apples.  Meanwhile, neither its role in U.S. foreign policy nor its methods are to be questioned, because the CIA does nothing worth questioning—there’s even a moment where Kendall, a bigwig within the U.S. intelligence community played by Terry O’Quinn, states that the CIA is not in the business of murder. Nobody laughs.  When Sydney is eventually brought into APO, a “legitimate” version of what SD-6 pretended to be, the fact that all of our characters now work for a black ops operation designed to escape most sorts of oversight raises no eyebrows.  Rather off-putting, for a series that is ostensibly partly about the shades of grey

Then again, the series never could establish a consistent thesis of morality; actions were good or bad depending on who did them and why. This cognitive dissonance can best be seen in the series’ first season finale, which has at its center two acts of torture. The first and longer one involves Sydney’s best friend, regular guy Will Tippin (Bradley Cooper), who has been captured by a group of baddies and is tortured for information on The Circumference, a device / process of vital importance to them. We have no idea what The Circumference is for—and crucially, neither do the baddies—but nevertheless, the torture, committed by Zhang Lee (Ric Young) whose only characterization is his othered scariness, is meant to be fully condemned; we’re supposed to cheer when Will, in an moment I admit is quite badass, injects Lee with the possibly-paralyzing substance Will himself had been threatened with earlier. The second instance involves Sydney’s father, CIA agent Jack Bristow (aka SpyDaddy, played by Victor Garber), torturing CIA colleague Steven Haladki (Joey Slotnick), a mole inside the agency, for information on Will’s whereabouts. After obtaining said information—torture works in this universe, at least when performed against baddies—Jack kills Haladki in cold blood, in a scene that is meant to make the audiences swoon at SpyDaddy’s awesomeness and overriding concern for his SpyDaughter. Yes, one can argue that the two scenarios are not equivalent: Will is an innocent, while Haladki  is a member of a group responsible for various deaths. Then again, so is Jack.

This unwillingness to deal with a crucial part of its premise speaks to the show’s priorities. Alias is a series that is more concerned with the surface of things rather than their significance; while this is a  perfectly valid approach, it also leaves the series feeling rather hollow with surprising regularity. It’s a series with  many interesting pieces, but it is often not sure what to make of them, or what it’s trying to say about them.

On one hand, this ephemeralness lent the series surprising malleability, allowing it to reinvent itself multiple times during its five year run. It is because the series had no particular commitment to its premise—or indeed any premise—that the show could pull off the baller move of blowing up its own status quo midway through its second season, far earlier than anyone had expected it to. On the other hand, it also occasionally left the show without a clear direction or theme. Is the series about redemption? No, because that would presuppose Sydney having done something requiring redemption. Is it about stopping SD-6? Not really: until the organization is actually taken down, there’s no clear sense of progression in the CIA’s efforts against the organization, and you can see the series getting bored with the concept during the first half of season 2.  Is it about Rambaldi, the 15^th century prophet and inventor whose legacy shaped the series’ mytharc? As if: the series never had a clue what it all meant, or how it related to the series’ themes, if at all. Is it about the how people compartmentalize their lives, and have to adopt different identities to deal with different people? Nope: while Sydney starts out wearing many faces–grad student, friend, SD-6 agent, CIA agent–which she must then juggle, that element abandoned by season 3, as Sydney’s spy work becomes her whole life.   Is it about trying to have it all? Nope, for the same reasons. The closest thing the series has to a consistent overarching theme is family, and even here, it can be remarkably hazy. What, exactly, is it trying to say?   How, exactly, does that theme jive with the series’ ending, where Sydney is left motherless, fatherless, and sisterless?

Alias can’t even claim to be about women. Not only is it damn fond of killing them (five of the show’s eight female regulars are killed off—one of them twice—compared with two of its nine male regulars), the show has a tendency of viewing kick-ass women—a concept it defines extremely narrowly—as exceptional in a world of kick-ass men. In the first season, Sydney is one of only three women (excluding extras) working for SD-6, with the others being dispatched soon after appearing. Anna Espinosa (Gina Torres) is the only agent we see working for K-Directorate. Despite being headed by a woman, The Man’s organization has one single female member in its rank and file, who is also killed soon after being introduced. Even by season 5, a point by which female agents were no longer especially rare for the series, the series still had episodes whose premise hinged on the idea that sending in an untrained and inexperienced data analyst into the field undercover as a sex worker (*) was the only option available to APO after pregnancy made Sydney unable to participate in the mission. Because apparently no other highly qualified female agents exist in the whole of the CIA.  What’s more, the series is not especially kind to women who do not fit into the kickass hottie mold; most of the “regular” women in the series, introduced to help flesh out characters’ personal lives, end up getting killed off; this includes the only woman of color in the series’ main cast. The series passes the Bechdel test less often than one might think, especially at first.

In short, upon watching the series as a whole, it’s hard for me to escape the feeling that Alias is about nothing else but showing Sydney Bristow (and other assorted women) kicking all the asses and wearing all the sexy costumes, and it is because of this lack of purpose, I feel, that the show never really truly found its feet after the first season and a half: the writers had no idea what the future would look like, or how it would be different from the present. Season 3, set place after the series has abandoned most vestiges of its original premise, was, many people agree, at best a notable step down and at worst a disaster, as the writers found themselves with no idea where the mysteries it had set up were going, or what to do with most of its cast. If season 4 had a direction or goal, it was to exorcise the ghosts of season 3 and place the series in more solid footing, which it succeeded in doing in a rather workmanlike manner. Season 5 spent its first half dealing with the consequences of Jennifer Garner’s pregnancy and a drastic cast shuffle—three of its regulars were gone, replaced by three all-new characters—and its second half scrambling to put together a series conclusion after being told of their cancellation.   While the writers could still pump out their fair share of awesome stories—Abrams, by the way, eventually ceased to be actively involved in running his own show, a development that could be seen as a hindrance, a boon, or both—they never congealed into a satisfying whole.

And really, that’s a damn shame. When it’s firing on all cylinders–or heck, even just most of them–Alias is an incredibly enjoyable show. It has awesome characters played by fantastic actors  with awesome chemistry.  It can be incredibly funny and fun.  There are a ton of moments that make me go “this fucking show” in the best of ways.  I love it to bits.  Still, it’s not hard to imagine it being a much better show than it actually is.

Because the one thing you must absolutely do immediately after saving the world is to take pictures of your accomplishment.  I’ve already defeated Omega, so now it’s time to see if my plucky band of girls (plus the token boy) can’t also defeat Shinryuu.

After doing a successful random run last year, I ended up attempting one of the new Chaos Runs, wherein things are even more random.  Thus I ended up with a team consisting of two surprisingly useful and not-as-redundant-as-one-would-think Beastmasters, one Geomance–a job I’d gotten last year–and a Dragoon whose jumping ability made defeating Neo Exdeath possible.

Now, to wait yet another year so I can do it all over again, this time with the personal goal of trying to not get Gilgamesh killed, if possible.

Image obtained from AfterEllen.com

At this point, I think it’s safe to say that we will almost certainly not be seeing Greer this season.  Given production schedules, the abridged episode order, and her role in the show, there’s no reason for us not to have heard about Gracie Dzienny’s return, if it were going to happen. This, on one hand, is disappointing, because Greer is absolutely wonderful.  On the other hand, it’s also super-interesting, largely because if this were any other show, there’s no way she wouldn’t be around.  At this point, it’s impossible for the writers not to know that she’s a fan favorite.  There’s no scheduling conflicts that I’m aware of that would have prevented her from being around, unless Dzienny is simply not focusing on acting right now.   The only reason I can think of for her absence is that the writers are incredibly committed to a plan, and that plan means that Greer cannot be in the picture for now.

The weird thing, though, is, that as “The Life of Brenna” shows, Greer is very much still in the picture: the episode is framed by an e-mail communications between her and Brenna, marking Greer as a confidant and repository of all of her former girlfriend’s angst about changing schools, her sister April’s cancer, and a life that seems to be spinning out of her control. She is obliquely alluded to when the show alludes to a character’s mentally ill ex, which accurately describes Greer during the second half of the first season. If there was ever an episode that merited a cameo, this was it. But no.  Not that the episode suffers for this absence, as even without our favorite eco-club president, “Life of Brenna” still manages to be a fantastic showcase for its title character.

Almost from the beginning–since meeting Greer, in fact–Brenna has proven a critical part of Chasing Life, and one of its most consistently interesting and successful elements.  Part of being a teenager is discovering oneself, and Brenna’s journey–which, as she tells film club mentor Margo near the end of the episode, has been rocky and eventful–has tempered her into a fantastically self-assured human being, whose journey of self-discovery has been fascinating to watch.  Having her carry an episode feels both natural and well-deserved, and both writer Joni Lefkowitz and actress Haley Ramm knock it out of the park with an episode that is a fantastic distillation of everything that makes her one of my favorite characters on TV.

Brenna’s story is very often about balancing her desires with familial expectations and responsibilities. For years perceived (due to a combination of unfair expectations, neglect, and actual mistakes on her part) as the Carver Family Screw-Up—a narrative she herself partially accepts—Brenna often feels that it’s her duty to step up and do whatever is necessary, including sacrificing herself for the good of the family, be it via hiding a pregnancy and abortion to spare them (and herself) from the drama, cozying up to half-sister Natalie to secure her as a bone marrow donor, and generally being there for April when necessary. When she isn’t able to step up—such as when she proved not to be a bone marrow match for April, or when her attempts to woo Natalie fail—it hits her hard–she so does not want to be That Person.

As “Life of Brenna” shows, however, her undertaking of these new responsibilities hasn’t exactly made her family view her any differently. Her choices are still being questioned: when Sara presses Brenna to come up with a post-high school plan, and Brenna decides that she wants to take some time to travel, Sara makes no secret of her dissatisfaction. When Sara’s financial situation becomes untenable, she decides that the optimal solution is to take Brenna away from Charton against her wishes, which not only forces Brenna to quit her job and puts her travel plans at risk, but also means abandoning the one extracurricular activity that she has come to enjoy. On top of that, after April makes her Maid of Honor, Sara stresses (not entirely inaccurately) that the timing of the wedding means that the planning needs to be done ASAP, adding additional pressure to Brenna to sacrifice her own wants for April’s “needs” (it’s worth noting that April herself feels none of Sara’s urgency). Even April, who is more sympathetic to Brenna, often treats her as someone to be coddled and protected.  Understandably, Brenna is growing ever more tired of it all, and getting pushed ever closer to the breaking point.   With no allies in the Carver household, she turns to half-sister Natalie, whose own whimsical approach to life makes her more obviously sympathetic to Brenna’s problems.

From a certain perspective, it’s entirely possible to see Brenna and her woes being nothing more than whining. After all, she has screwed up plenty, and tends to keep her problems close to her vest, which keeps family members from knowing all that is going on in her life. What’s more, given that April’s cancer is literally a matter of life and death, it makes sense for matters pertaining to it to be top priority. Similarly, it’s possible to see why Sara continues to be worried about Brenna’s path in life, given the way the status quo consistently makes the path towards financial stability ever narrower. It doesn’t make Mama Carver right, but it makes her mistakes understandable. However, that’s not the side we’re asked to take here.  However, we’re also meant to sympathize  with Brenna, who tries to do her best even when her life often sucks, and who passionately pursues what she wants, even when it comes at a cost.

And that’s key. Chasing Life is largely a show without villains, but rather, people with different conceptions of the world, trying to do their best. Brenna’s situation is a perfect recipe for drama, and “Life of Brenna” milks it all expertly. Curiously, the strife here isn’t between Brenna and Sara, but between Brenna and April, who, after being told by Natalie about Brenna’s prior aborted pregnancy–first revealed in the second half of the first season–who didn’t know she didn’t know about it, feels hurt about being kept in the dark about huge parts of Brenna’s life.

But first, let’s talk about Margo.

Margo’s introduction this season has been a weird thing. After the season one finale introduced cancer patient Finn as what seemed to be a potential love interest for Bren, and after a scene in which Brenna and Ford kiss was included in the season 2 trailer, the expectation was that either or both would eventually fill Greer’s shoes. Supporting that speculation is the fact that the three have comparable weight: Greer made Brenna discover new sides about herself, and the two were there for each other during some of their darker periods; Ford was a friend when Brenna really needed one, and helped her get an abortion and keep it secret when they were still only lab partners; Finn and Brenna, from all appearances, share an intimate connection, even though they’ve yet to meet—she was apparently the anonymous donor of the bone marrow that helped him deal with his cancer.

Margo, in comparison, exists. She has things in common with Brenna, and they get along and find each other attractive, but they don’t seem to connect on a fundamental level the way Greer and Brenna could. And that’s fine: not every relationship has to be a great romance–see Kieran whoe eventually turned out to be perfectly likeable. Still, this is not what I expected going into the season, and given the notable age difference and ex-girlfriend baggage, it all makes me suspect that Margo (much like the film club subplot as a whole) is actually a means to an end, rather than an end in and of itself. That she initially rejected Brenna’s advances before reversing herself and making some advances of her own only adds to that feeling. In the end, I’m more interested than invested.

Where Greer, when she was around, was oftentimes the focus of Brenna’s story arcs, the romance part of “Life of Brenna” ends up feeling like a sideshow: the real meat of the episode is Brenna’s interactions, and feelings towards, her two sisters. The bond between Brenna, Natalie, and April has led to some of the series’ most consistently compelling scenes—although there’s stiff competition there—and this episode is no exception, exploring the whys and wherefores of their current dynamics.

Even before April asked Natalie to take care of Brenna, Thomas Carver’s middle child had already taken her little sister under her wing. As mentioned earlier and is made explicit by Beth (who, sadly, is mostly absent this episode), this makes perfect sense from Brenna’s perspective: Natalie’s approach to life is closer to Brenna’s than April’s is, and so she is more likely to be understanding. What’s more, the fact that April is oftentimes the indirect cause of Brenna’s angst means she’s too close to the issues to be a good confidant. Still, this doesn’t stop April from being somewhat hurt by that distance, particularly since, from her perspective, she’s been doing all she can to help Brenna. These feelings shape the climax of the episode, which occurs when all three sisters, stuck inside a classroom after breaking into Brenna’s school in order to retrieve the wedding invitations Brenna had forgotten there, decide to hash out their various issues.  As is Chasing Life‘s wont, they end up with a greater understanding of one another, and with implicit promises that they’ll try to do better.

This, again, is a perfect example of what is so compelling about Chasing Life. All three women are trying to the best they can. They’re not perfect, screw up plenty, and rarely see eye to eye, but they’d go to bat for each other at a moment’s notice—see Natalie’s possibly ill-advised but passionate attack on Jake, the boy who got Brenna pregnant, after a chance encounter in a wedding dress store—and care about each other enough to admit mistakes in order to solve whatever issues may arise. What largely works about the episode is what largely works about the series as a whole: its rather large bench of compelling characters, which interact in often funny, poignant ways. After starting out being kind of horrible, Ford has become a character I’m always glad to see, and her teasing of Brenna and her interactions with Margo is fantastic.   While Beth doesn’t get a lot to do here, she does her best with the time she’s got, particularly during a “trying on dresses montage” with Brenna and Natalie. Even Sara, whose foot probably pays rent what with all the time it spends in her mouth, feels properly sympathetic as someone who is in over her head and sucks at dealing with things, but keeps on trying.

This, in turn, speaks to the detail in the episode which most bugs me, which occurs when Margo receives a text message from her so-called “Crazy Ex”, who is apparently an alcoholic.   We’ll be meeting said ex next episode, and from all appearances, we are being asked to view her mental illness as a license to see her in an unsympathetic light. This bugs the hell out of me, and especially because “crazy ex” could be used—and was used—to describe Greer, and I’m not sure if the writers realize this. It may well be that the show actually intends to explore stigmas attached to mental illness, but even if that’s the case, this episode is still portraying Margo as the sort of person who thinks “crazy” is the first adjective she needs to use to describe an ex, which strikes me as being neither kind nor well-intentioned.

Speaking of less-than-successful things, this episode also features a b-plot involving Dominic and his mother, but even then, the reason it doesn’t succeed has less to do with its components—it’s actually rather lovely, thanks in large part to Illeana Douglas’ performance as Marianne Russo—and everything to do with the fact that it’s completely extraneous to everything else that has been going on.  After the second half of the first season took steps to keep Dominic relevant after his breakup with April—with ties to April via the Post, Natalie, and Beth—the second season has severed those ties, leaving him without much of a reason for existing in April’s story, beyond propping up an unnecessary love triangle.  The show has had to give him something to do separate from April, and while it’s not bad material—Dominic here is the most likeable he’s been all season—it also uses time that might be better spent with more relevant characters. As is, he’s very much in the vein of characters like Larry in season 2 of Orange Is the New Black.

“Life of Brenna” is very much a transitional episode (although one could argue that all episodes are, with this sort of series) it’s very much about saying goodbye to one chapter in Brenna’s life before beginning another.  Here, too, Greer shows her weight; while she’s been absent from the series since the next-to-last episode of the previous season, she’s been mentioned every episode since, as befits a character of such importance to Brenna.  Here, however, as Brenna edits her latest e-mail to her former girlfriend during the episode’s final minutes there’s a certain sense of finality.  Thanks to the evolution of Brenna’s relationships with April and Margo, Greer feels less essential.  It’d be interesting to see if she continues to be mentioned with the same frequency, or whether her role in the series has now come to a definitive end. I still miss her, though.

[Content Note: Transphobic representations]

As the #SummerOfAnswers rolled on, my favorite A theory was by Rachel Watkins, who runs the PLL Theorist Tumblr. According to the theory posted on May 22, 2015, A, then believed to be Charles Dilaurentis, would turn out to be Cece Drake, who knew and loved Charles while they were both in Radley, and loved him until the day Charles died. After that moment, Cece decided to play the game, becoming the first A. I didn’t agree with all of it—I’ve always believed that Mona originated the A identity and iconography on her own, like the show claimed, and that whomever almost killed Alison simply used it as a new way to carry on with what they were already separately doing—but it felt satisfying; if the show had ended up doing something like that—and it did—I would have been happier than I would have been with almost any other resolution.   I liked Cece as A: not only did I enjoy the character of Cece, she’d been made into a big enough figure in the history of the show to make her a satisfying answer. Granted, she didn’t have much of a reason to torment the Liars, but the same could be said of most other viable suspects, and the series latter de-emphasizing of the high school and family elements seemed to suggest that the Liars’ actual connection to A’s larger motives would be tangential at best.

Other, not altogether dissimilar theories also had Cece as A, but also took the season 5 finale’s revelation that A was Charles (Dilaurentis, as eventually confirmed in season 6) at face value. Charles, the theories explained, was actually trans, and eventually grew up to be Cece Drake. While they kept Cece as A and were more in tune with what the show actually seemed to be setting up—it initially suggested Charles was actually dead before revealing that no, he was still alive—it was an extremely unsatisfying theory, largely because it would mean that the person who had tormented Alison Dilaurentis, the Liars, and increasingly large amounts of people, and who had killed several people during the course of the show, was also the only trans character in the show.   Said theory, if true, would be a slap in the face to the show’s many trans fans, to the people who had come to see the show as a (decidedly imperfect) oasis in a universe still hostile to LGBTA people, and to the young watchers who deserve better than to being misled about trans people. No matter the execution, it would make Pretty Little Liars’ universe into one where cis people could be very many things, and trans people would be the one thing they always were in television, killers or victims or both. Even if the show attempted to somehow redeem A the way it had done with its previous villains, there was no guarantee that it would work, and her narrative would never stop reinforcing the idea that trans people are fundamentally dishonest and dangerous, which is the opposite of the truth and an idea that constantly endangers them. Therefore, it seemed too terrible a possibility to contemplate.

So of course, it turned out to be the case.

“Game Over, Charles” is an engrossing hour of television—arguably far more engrossing that it had any right to be. The story of Cece Drake (a.k.a. Charlotte Delaurentis a.k.a. the second “A”), is, much like the story of Alison Dilaurentis (a.k.a. Vivian Darkbloom a.k.a. the first Red Coat) in “A is for Answers,” told in the form of an infodump, with the Liars as little more than a sounding board for the character giving answers away. And yet, much like that earlier episode, it works, carried in large part by a fantastic performance by Vanessa Ray, whom I haven’t seen at all outside this show in what now feels like an injustice. She absolutely sells Cece’s story, to the point where Alison and the Liars’ plea that Charlotte not kill herself seems almost earned.   The answers it gives out don’t make complete sense, but they make sense enough, and it’s hard to see them doing better given the circumstances. (Wren? Puh-leeze.)

I said “almost earned.” Both Pretty Little Liars and the pretty little liars at its center are forgiving sorts; the show hasn’t met a stalker it hasn’t wanted to redeem, and the Liars have shown an incredible affinity for learning to live with the people who would harm them. Part of it has to do with their characters; Pretty Little Liars as a whole is a redemption story for the Liars, who, as The Jenna Thing demonstrates, could be damn foul when they wanted to be, and it makes sense for them to want to pay that forward. Part of it simply has to do with the fact that characters like Mona, Jenna, and Alison are some of the show’s most popular characters, and so keeping them around and in the main characters’ orbits makes a certain amount of sense. That said, I believe there is a limit.

Something I’ve come to write about with increasing frequency is the idea that forgiveness is never something one is simply entitled to. The person who has been harmed has no obligation to let bygones be bygones or to assuage the offender’s sense of guilt (not that Cece ever had much of that in the first place; contrition is far from her primary motivation here) and understanding that is a vital part of social justice work. Being the better person is a fantastic gift but a terrible obligation, and it’s an obligation the privileged often impose on the oppressed. Television’s fondness for redemption arcs, thus, is something that bothers me: sometimes they’re just not justified, and I often long for works where a person cuts someone out from their lives and manages to, you know, actually cut that person out from their life.

Take the case of the second “A”, who has terrorized the Liars for some ten months and Alison, indirectly, for two years. She has, in that time, violated their privacy, drugged them, stalked them, framed them as accessories for a murder they didn’t commit and did not in fact even happen, kidnapped them, and physically and emotionally tortured them. No matter how tragic Cece’s story may be, the Liars have, I feel, every right to respond to it with a shrug. After all, their lives have been made hell too, and you don’t see them donning hoodies and proceeding to terrorize strangers.

Pretty Little Liars is, at its core, about the patriarchy, and as writer and fan extraordinaire Heather Hogan consistently notes, about living as girls and women in a world where the patriarchy consistently and purposefully compromises one’s ability to do so. One can argue that, given how one of the most effective tools in the patriarchy’s box is its ability to turn women against each other, it follows that one of the most effective tools is in the battle against it is the ability to recognize that this has happened and come together when everything threatens to tear you apart.   And yet, one doesn’t need accept everyone who has been similarly screwed over; the old argument that you don’t have to like or support Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin simply because they’re women comes to mind. And for all the terrible things Mona and Ezra did, at least the Liars had their previous relationships with those two to fall back on. Cece, meanwhile, is an acquaintance at best, who decided to torture them for what is essentially “just because”. They have a right to be angry, and this episode appears to be doing its best to deny the Liars that, and that’s a problem.

And here is where the show falls into a trap, because as much of a right they have to their feelings, for the Liars to not demonstrate empathy this one person when they’ve forgiven Mona and Ezra Fucking Fitz would have been nothing short of monstrous. Charlotte does what she did because was taught to dehumanize people by her parents, taught that she was terrible and wrong, and was never placed in a position where she could learn to know better. Ezra Fitz did all he did for a fucking book. There’s no comparison between their situations, and for the white male son of privilege to be granted more sympathy than the trans woman who was marginalized all her life would have been the transphobic whipped cream over what is already an already rather transphobic sundae.

Because, yeah: Cece is trans. Had she existed in a show that had trans people instead of a trans person, and those people were presented as being anything like they are in real life—infinitely variegated, far more likely to be the victims of violence than its perpetrators, but also far from defined by that—then they may have been able to tell her story without incident. As is, they almost manage it: the story very clearly not about how being trans made Cece terrible, but about how the people who should have loved her the most failed her and left her no choice but to be terrible. Had the Liars—including Alison—not been in the picture as her victims, she would without question be seen as the hero in her own story. I mean, A is basically Batman—a billionaire genius who despite having no superpowers somehow manages to be omnipotent. Who wouldn’t want to follow her adventures? Several years after being just an extra in a hoodie, she’s suddenly interesting again.

One wonders then: was this absolutely necessary? Could A’s story had been told without making her trans? Could Cece’s? Looking at the episode, the answer seems to be both yes and no. Yes, a satisfying resolution to the A mystery could have surely been crafted without making A or Cece trans or making a trans person into the Big Bad; “Charles” could have easily been “Charlotte” from the start, or Cece could have acted as Charlotte’s agent of revenge as suggested in the aforementioned theory. In that respect, Cece’s gender appears to be little more than a way to add a final twist to the mystery, in a way that was rather ineffective, since precisely no one felt that A’s gender was set in stone, even with the Charles reveal.

On the other hand, looking at the episode, one could argue that Charlotte’s trans identity was the entire point. It is Kenneth’s refusal to accept her for who she was that landed her in Radley and exacerbated whatever issues she may have had. It was society’s institutionalized transphobia that allowed Bethany to frame her for the murder of Marion Cavanaugh without any actual false evidence. While one could still weave a story about the patriarchy starring a cis Charlotte, it feels…lesser, somehow. While one could argue that the patriarchy does consider the simple fact of being female akin to being mentally ill, presenting it with the directness that this episode does would have been almost impossible. One can also argue that, in mirroring Charlotte’s oppression to the Liars, the show is affirming her innate femaleness in such a way that can be seen as positive, in another context.

And yet, this is again the problem: Charlotte is not all women. While I don’t wish to actually compare her to the Liars in a round of Oppression Olympics to try and determine who had it worse, the fact remains that a) in a world that more accurately reflected ours, Cece would have an exponentially harder life than the Liars did, so mirroring their experiences is inaccurate in many respects and b) Emily, Aria, Hanna, and Spencer passed through their particular crucibles and became better people in the process, while Charlotte didn’t. And because Cece is not just one among many, but just the one, we’re smack dab in “trans people are worse people” territory.

So let’s say for arguments sake that yes, Cece / Charlotte needed to be trans. While properly telling her story would have been difficult, it was also far from impossible—especially not on ABC Family, where shows like The Fosters and Chasing Life continue the work Pretty Little Liars started in telling the stories of LGBTA people.  Marlene King chose not to do so. Given the option to tell multiple stories about trans people and show them in their in their diamond-like complexity and brilliance, she instead chose to tell the one (wrong) story everyone told about them. Assuming for a moment that this resolution was the plan from the beginning—and I personally believe that the fundamentals were decided on earlier than many think—and that the story of Charlotte mattered more than the mystery of A, then Marlene could have cast an actual trans actress to play Cece who could at least have told her that this was not a good idea. That the story was better and more sympathetically told than most is, in many respects, irrelevant.

Oh, and we learn who Red Coat is, too. We didn’t know we needed to learn who she is, given that when we’d last seen her in season 4 we’d apparently learned the identities of the two people to adopt the persona, but given that season 6 reintroduced her as A’s friend and ally, it was necessary to reveal that as well. Personally, I was hoping it’d be Mona, somehow finally managing to enter A’s inner circle: the idea that the former Red Coat was now A at the same time a former A was now Red Coat appealed mightily to my sense of symmetry. But no, instead it was Sara Harvey.

Now, on paper, I could see this working, thematically if nowhere else. When we very first heard about Sara, we knew her as the Alison to her group of Liars. Given that, there is pleasing symmetry to the idea that she adopted the persona Alison herself adopted back in seasons 3 and 4. And yet, it doesn’t work: where Alison was enthralling, Sara was just dull, with no notes to play but shell shock [*]. Natural enough, if it had been genuine—and I had hoped it was genuine—but it did not make for good television; it does not help that Dre Davis, who plays her, has but a fraction of Sasha Pieterse’s screen presence. What’s more, there’s no sense of weight to either the mystery or its resolution. There was no need to reintroduce Red Coat at this point in the game. What’s more, the tiny number of recurring characters currently in play made finding the solution to this “mystery” a no-brainer.

[*] Again with the symmetry, if Sara Harvey didn’t feel like Alison, neither did Alison through most of season 6. This is not a good thing.

Now, apparently Sara Harvey will still be a player after the series’ five year gap, and perhaps her more adult self can work where her younger self didn’t. The reveal, after all, raises a whole lot of questions—how, when and why, mainly—and in theory, allows her to play something more akin to her actual personality, which then has a chance to be more interesting. It’s hard to be optimistic, and the character has by this point spent all the good will she might have had, but still, one can hope.

As for the Liars…there’s really not much to say about them, as aside from Emily punching out Sara and Spencer defusing a bomb—both of which take up less than a collective minute of screen-time—they’re just there as witnesses. They don’t even get to stop A, as much as A, for once, chooses to give up (there’s the sense that she’s going forward with an actual endgame because she’s run out of moves, which suggests, scarily enough, that the Rosewood Police Department may have actually been good for something). The episode ends with a five-year jump, after everyone has presumably finished college without incident and moved on into their professional careers, and perhaps that’s for the best, as the last few seasons have often felt tired, as an inability to consistently continue bringing the over-the-top what-the-fuckery ended up combining with some blatant attempts to stall for time and a shift in perspective away from the high school element to bring us a lot of uninspired pap. Season 6A has been somewhat better in this regard, with the A investigation getting some much-needed direction as it moved towards its endgame, but even still, it’s notable that it’s brought us no particularly interesting new characters, and how several characters—most notably Alison and Emily—have been at their nadirs, so I’m glad the writers have the chance to start over and recharge their creative juices. Heck, at this point I wouldn’t mind a longer hiatus, as production on this show must be exhausting.

I first got into Pretty Little Liars with season 5. I’d previously watched the season 4 Halloween special (Ashley Benson in a corset? Fine, if you insist.) and followed the Fug Girls’ recaps, but it was not until the 100^th episode that I began watching regularly, which was enough inducement for me try and catch up by buying the past season DVDs (it helped that the closing of a video rental story made them available at a ridiculous markdown). It was then that I truly became a fan, hunting down recaps and beginning live-tweeting as I watched this often ridiculous, often beautiful, often terrible show, and the many, many wonderful expressions of fandom it has inspired. As the season finale and the A reveal drew closer, it made me excited in a way few things in recent memory have done. Now, I’m uncertain what to do with the series. I’m not sure I can enjoy it any more. I’m not sure if I should still enjoy it.

This is not the series’ first betrayal of its themes and audience. The series has a consistent problem with its portrayal of people of color, and especially when it comes to its black women, who are few in number and also dead. It continuously and consistently romanticizes relationships with inherent power imbalances, starting with Ezra Fitz and Aria, but by no means ending there. Its attempts at making Alison palatable as an actual character rather than a symbol involved walking back her sexual history, implying not only that her sexuality was somehow bad, but also that she, at fifteen, was fully able to consent to relationships with people in their twenties and was therefore an agent instead of a victim. I’ve recently come to think that one of the reasons why Mona Vanderwaal’s romantic love for Hanna Marin remain hidden behind the flimsiest of subtexts is because making Mona explicitly bisexual or gay would mean that every woman to don a black hoodie or red coat in the series (excepting one Spencer Hastings a.k.a. the only one of those to also not be an antagonist) can be fit into the LGBTA banner, which says…something. So it’s not as if I can exactly be truthfully shocked at what they’ve done; it fits with a long-standing pattern, and one which I’ve implicitly enabled by continuing to watch. I can’t say they’ve crossed a line with the finale, because the line was crossed long ago, and I just didn’t care enough to do much of substance about it. What makes this one offense worse than the others? Perhaps it doesn’t matter.

So I don’t know. I managed to quit watching Arrow regularly after they’d killed off Sara Lance, and that was back when the show was still at its height. Still, that show was also incredibly easy to replace, which isn’t something that can be said about Pretty Little Liars. There’s really nothing else like it on television, as the finale once again demonstrated.

Whether I end up watching or not, here’s my one specific wish for season 6B and beyond. I want the show give us trans characters that are not Cece. I want them to be played by an actual trans actors—Tom Phelan, for one, is around, is age appropriate, and has a history with ABC Family. I want them to be as resilient as we’ve seen the Liars be, in a world that constantly searches to police their existence in a way Hanna, Aria, Spencer, and Emily would not even begin to imagine, if the series weren’t so committed to being over the top. I want them to be legitimate love interests worth rooting for, and give them successful love lives, with or without the Liars. I want the writers to use the skills displayed in the crafting of characters like Mona or Paige and have them become fan favorites. Maybe then the show can regain the faith it lost with this reveal…or not: the show is not owed forgiveness, no matter what steps it may take in the future to correct this offense. Sure, maybe doing so could be described as the writers selling out to a small contingent of fans. Sure, there’s no guarantee that they’ll succeed. They should do it anyway. It’d be the most shocking twist of all.

So Chasing Life, one of my favorite new shows of the last few years, got cancelled earlier this month.  Worse still (depending on how you look at things) it ended with most of its ongoing plots unresolved, including the one where Brenna Carver dealt with the return of ex-girlfriend and fellow cinnamon roll Greer Danville to Boston.  The episode itself indicated that Brenna was getting ready for a night out with Greer at the New England Aquarium, before being interrupted by other events.  We never got to see the date, which is an absolute crime, particularly since we hadn’t seen Greer all season.   So I wrote it.

At the entrance to the New England Aquarium, Greer Danville tried not to pace.
She wasn’t normally this anxious.  Correction: she wasn’t normally this visibly anxious.  Correction correction: she wasn’t normally this excited.  Yes, that was better.  In any case, it was all Brenna Carver’s fault.

Greer had not known what to expect when she’d showed up at Brenna’s house the previous day.  The two former girlfriends were still on friendly terms, and their break-up had everything to do with external factors and nothing to do with the way they actually felt about each other, but still, a lot could change in five months.  Brenna’s social media feed, at least, had suggested some level of moving on, and Greer had convinced herself that she was fine with that, if that was the case.

(Correction: almost convinced herself.)

The rest of the fic can be read at Fanfiction.net.

(Content Note: Transphobia; Transphobic Narratives)

The best scene in “Of Late I Think of Rosewood”, the premiere for the second half of Pretty Little Liars’ sixth season, takes place in a courtroom, where the Liars are being compelled to testify as to their mental state regarding Charlotte Dilaurentis, a.k.a. Cece Drake a.k.a. Red Coat a.k.a. A, in order to determine whether she should be set free. Charlotte’s sister has asked the Liars to live up to their name and testify that everything is hunky-dory, and because the Liars are all too used to dancing to Alison Dilaurentis’ tune, they agree. Aria even has prepared script and everything.

And then, Aria says no. Abandoning her prepared remarks, the littlest liar asserts that no, she is not okay, that the scars she obtained during Charlotte’s nine-month reign of terror are nowhere near fully healed, and that she does not feel safe. It’s quite possibly her best scene in the entire history of the show, and, in a world that consistently asks its underprivileged to Get Over It and forgive and forget transgressions enacted by more privileged peoples and institutions—a world in which women are consistently asked to forgive how the Patriarchy has arrayed things against them and to “act normal, bitch” because #NotAllMen—it can be considered a rather powerful, brave statement.

Except…

Flitting in and out of the episode like the world’s most entitled moth is Ezra Fitz, former Rosewood High teacher, author, and perpetual love interest to Aria. In the show’s fourth season, it was revealed that Ezra spent years stalking and lying to the Liars, recording hours’ worth of footage of them as they were terrorized by Rosewood’s various As, stalkers and killers and doing nothing with that knowledge to protect them. Worse, he got away with it: while Charlotte is as much a victim and perpetrator, misshapen by a society that constantly and consistently denied her the right to self-determination, and was eventually arrested, prosecuted, and (apparently) killed, Ezra, who abused his position of authority as both an educator and actual adult for the sake of a book, still has his reputation and his livelihood, and is free to open coffee shops and continue being the Liars’ pseudo-ally and a viable love interest. It could almost be an astute observation about the way privilege operates, except that absolutely none of the characters or writers notice the disparity: Ezra is just a guy who did “research” once.

I mentioned in my review for “Game Over, Charles” that Pretty Little Liars, in resolving the mystery of A’s identity the way they did and attempting to make Charlotte’s motivations sympathetic, had set a trap for themselves, making her both unforgivable while at the time making it so that anything but forgiveness was unthinkable. Under most standards, Aria would have been perfectly correct in taking the stance she did: she should not feel forced to forgive the person who threatened her for her entire senior year, and for people to expect her to do it, or even pretend to do it, is terrible. On the other hand, for her to not feel safe in the presence of a mentally ill trans woman, while being perfectly fine with the white male who did comparable things, is equally terrible.

“Of Late I Think of Rosewood” is all about how the show falls into traps of its own making. The first third is largely spent on exposition, as the characters dutifully talk about things they already know happened during the series’ five year gap, but which the audience has no idea about. The time jump, which could have been a good way to refresh the show’s creative juices and ditch the dead wood (namely the Liars’ male love interests, who should not all continue to be factors five years after high school ended) is instead used as an opportunity to retread things from earlier seasons—a night spent over drinks, a disappearance, a death, a funeral, an investigation. While there’s an inherent risk in a show abandoning or straying too far from its premise, Pretty Little Liars, in sticking so closely to what it knows, risks becoming inessential, particularly now that How to Get Away with Murder is a thing that exists.

Finally, there’s Charlotte and her fate. The most egregious thing about “Game Over Charles” (which was, in my opinion, almost the best possible resolution to the last three seasons’ worth of mysteries) was unquestionably the way it resolved things by introducing the series’ first (and, almost certainly only) trans character, and have her story be made up of almost existing negative tropes about trans women. Charlotte Dilaurentis, we learn in that episode, is trans; she is also deceitful, homicidal, mentally ill, a victim, and the sort of person only her family could love—and played by a cis woman, to boot. While in many ways a fascinating character, that characters was now also in the center of a field of thorns; doing anything with her that did not further betray and cause very real harm to trans people (stories are important, after all) would require much care and delicacy. So of course “Of Late I think of Rosewood” features Charlotte’s death, as her story arc hits the trans woman narrative bingo: victim, perpetrator, corpse. Of all the possible things that could have been done with Charlotte, killing her off in order to kick-start the season’s new story arc was the absolute worst choice, and raises serious questions about showrunner I. Marlene King. And yet, here we are: once the nigh-omnipotent A was revealed as a trans woman, all her powers abandoned her, and our list of living trans characters in the Pretty Little Liars story is now back at zero.

This being Pretty Little Liars, one can argue that Charlotte’s death should be taken with several spoonfuls of salt. After all, Alison was dead until she wasn’t, as was Mona. Given who we’re talking about here, there’s every chance that this is all part of a larger plot. While undeniably true, Charlotte being alive under the circumstances isn’t much better than her being dead. After all, here are the possibilities.

1) She’s been kidnapped by the series’ new big bad, in which case she’s a victim, again.

2) She’s faked her death in order to resume her A shenanigans, in which case she’s the villain, again.

3) She–and possibly Alison–have faked her death in order to protect Charlotte.

Integral to all of these is Charlotte not being around. Even if she’s not dead, her role places her as an object, invisible and agency-less, instead of a person in her own right. In a world starved for stories affirming that trans people—and especially trans women—are entitled to be seen as complex, multifaceted people with a right to exist and be visible and respected, the show instead argues the opposite: they exist only insofar as they’re needed to prop up other people’s stories. And that’s bullshit, of the sort that Freeform ABC Family should be combating. But then, between this, the cancellation of series like Chasing Life, and the focus on purely cosmetic rebranding, perhaps that is no longer a priority for the network, if it ever was.

If one thing helps make “Of Late I Think of Rosewood” at least somewhat compelling, it’s the women at its center. Spencer, Emily, Aria, Hanna and the rest continue being fascinating characters well served by the actors playing them, and just seeing them interact after all their history and years apart is a treat, even when the story surrounding them isn’t. The scene where the four core Liars get together at the new refurbished Radley—now a fancy hotel—is as good a scene as any we’ve gotten, and for a moment, it seems like the show still has something to say more than one hundred episodes in.

This no longer seems likely.

Sometimes it pays to be skeptical.

When news of what would eventually become Legends of Tomorrow first popped up, the concept seemed, to put it in the kindest possible words, contrived. A team made up of Sara Lance, Captain Cold, and the Atom? What. It seemed like a something that had come into being not because somebody had had a fantastic fucking idea for a story that required these characters, but because The Powers that Be wanted to make some money out of characters from Arrow and The Flash that no longer had homes in those shows and needed a concept that could accommodate them as well as other assorted DCU B- and C-listers.

Now that the pilot has come and gone, it now seems that the initial suspicions were correct: Legends of Tomorrow is a show that exists primarily to give its characters something to do.

The concept of Legends is most efficiently described as Suicide Squad meets Doctor Who. In an attempt to stop future world conqueror Vandal Savage from becoming Vandal Savage: world conqueror, time master Rip Hunter recruits a motley mix of good guys and bad guys to travel across the timeline and impede Savage’s rise. It’s actually a decent concept, and one that is completely at odds with what the series wants to do.

Time travel, as a storytelling device, tends to open up a world. If you’re not super-worried about the mechanics, time travel makes it possible to introduce every sort of concept you might want to introduce without having to do too much legwork to justify it. Want a story starring a mute sword-user, a princess, a super-scientist, a frog knight, a robot, a cavewoman, and Vegeta if Vegeta were a cult leader? Time travel means you get to have that story, and to be as bananas as possible without breaking suspension of disbelief Here, however, it has the effect of making the Arrow-verse’s largest story feel tiny.

Rip Hunter is going to be traveling all through time in an attempt to stop Vandal Savage. He could, in theory, recruit people from anywhere in the DC Universe. However, because of the way Legends of Tomorrow was conceived, he instead recruits seven people from 2016 United States. Why? Because these are the people the producers wanted to sell to the audience. The show’s attempts to justify this are flimsy, nor is there any that really works: time travel, done right, also has the effect of sucking all the urgency out of a ticking clock, so there’s no reason why Rip couldn’t just take his time and recruit the best possible people.

Instead we get these guys, and about half of them work, if you’re being charitable. Sara Lance (Canary) and Leonard Snart (Captain Cold) fare best, largely because they became fan favorites due to their strong identities. Mick Rory (Heatwave) is fun, but largely because he’s in the orbit of the other two characters; he’s never convinced me as an individual. Rip Hunter and Ray Palmer, I don’t really care for: they’ve got white male hetero hero problems, and I’m not here for that. Jackson, one half of Firestorm, is fine but feels like a placeholder character, and I keep wanting him to be a her—the series’ current gender ratio is not promising—and to not be from the present; not only would it have the benefit of making the team less artificial, it would have given the pilot one less character to deal with, and gotten rid of the appalling scene where he’s drugged by Martin and kidnapped in order to get him to answer the call to adventure.

On that note, what the fuck, show? As much as I like Victor Garber (SpyDaddy is everything) I haven’t cared a whole lot about Martin Stein—he’s largely there to sound smart—and this episode just makes me hate him. There is no universe in which his actions are okay, and the dude got of waaaaaaay too lightly. The moment Rip found out about that, he should have parked his ass down and left him in 2016. And while it’d be one thing if the show were to actually play him as sinister, I really don’t think that’s what they’re going for, and it’s a huge false note in a pilot filled with them.

Then there’s the Hawks. This is a couple with a lot of baggage, both from their complicated continuity and DC’s insistence that they’re somehow interesting characters. Their previous introduction in December’s The Flash / Arrow crossover had not endeared them to me, and nothing changes here; they’re exhausting. I’m one of those few who didn’t like Shayera in Justice League / Justice League Unlimited, and even that version would have been far preferable to what we have here, which annoys me more with every passing minute in which she is not kicking Carter Hall in the balls.

Because Carter Hall? Is the worst.  He’s every trope of “heroic” masculinity personified, and none of it makes him compelling or fun. It says a lot that in an episode with a “hero” who roofies and kidnaps his partner, Hawkman is still the character I want to see quartered, ground up and fed to mice.

The Hawks exemplify how this series can feel both daring and completely lacking in ambition. The pair’s shtick, as established, is that they reincarnate multiple times throughout history. Why, then, do we need to have the 2016 versions around? The show could have easily kept the actors on ice for a bit, and then reintroduced past or future versions of the characters, and brought those onboard. Yes, this means the pilot is left without a whole lot of plot—the Hawks are integral to the team’s first time jump, which involves rescuing the son the two conceived in another life—but since that’s all boring as heck, it’s no great loss.

(I will bet everything that one or both of the Hawks will eventually be killed off and replaced with another version, but that’s not the same thing.)

So conceptually, the show is a mess, one that isn’t helped by the execution. There are ways in which one can make a pilot episode featuring lots of characters sing—J.J. Abrams did it twice with Alias and Lost—and that’s without the benefit of five episodes designed purely to set up the series. Here, however, everything feels plodding and miserable, with only two scenes that stood out as enjoyable: the conversation between Sara and Laurel Lance, and the bar scene with Sara, Captain Cold, and Heatwave. These scenes, it’s worth noting, have little to do with time travel or the whole Vandal Savage biz: the Lance sisters scene is about Sara making her choice, but it is largely portrayed through the context of her history; the bar scene is just characters having fun by kicking ass.

The rest is all super-heroes by the numbers, the sort of thing that becomes less and less excusable as the genre continues its conquest of our TV and movie screens. Vandal Savage is a dud of a villain; he’s been around for three episodes now, and I can’t at all buy him as the sort of guy who can conquer the world if he didn’t have three thousand years to do so. The future world we briefly see has nothing to distinguish it from dozens of other post-apocalyptic hellscapes. Similarly, the show’s vision of the 1975 has nothing to help it stand out, nor does the show have anything to say about the era.

And then there’s the time travel itself, which becomes a mess in the space of a single hour. I’ll admit I didn’t initially give this too much thought, but once one does, the contradictions begin piling up, the most notable being that Rip cares a lot about not altering or damaging the timeline—he chooses these particular characters because they can allegedly be killed without altering it—except insofar as it stops an event that affects the whole world, in which case altering the timeline is a-ok. Pick one or the other, bro.

In the end, the main issue with Legends of Tomorrow is that it feels both too derivative and yet not derivative enough. Fans of Doctor Who will find this premise very familiar, but the show, as is, has little of Who’s charm or sense that everything can happen, which is something the current incarnation of Who showcased from day one—killer store mannequins, and is potentially this show’s trump card. Similarly, the show, due to being a TV show and having TV show concerns, loses a lot of the inherent uncertainty that makes something like Suicide Squad so fun. Imagine if the show had the freedom to change protagonists at will, so that the line-up is shaken up every six episodes or so, so that by the end of season two we had a team composed of say, Sara, Nyssa al Ghul, the Hourman robot, Lobo, a cowgirl version of Hawkgirl, the Shaggy Man, Sarah Rainmaker, Scandal Savage, Emerald Empress, and Mademoiselle Marie. Now that show would be fun. Legends of Tomorrow could get there, but it’s got a lot of bagagge to get rid of before it can do so.

Dreamfall Chapters is huge. Too huge, really: it’s the finale to a story to a game released ten years ago, dealing with plot points and characters from a game released in 1999, featuring three worlds (or more, depending on how you count), two cities, four protagonists, and the answers (or simply answers) to a million different mysteries. It’s a story about life, death, rebirth, dreams, identity, depression, growing up, relationships, addiction, conquest, colonialism, politics, passion, genocide, racism, complacency, sisterhood, guilt, redemption and whatever other theme you’d care to find. That developer Red Thread’s scant resources are just about enough to give us the stage play version of events, and to do so fairly well, speaks highly of their commitment and passion. And yet, it’s still the stage play version of events: think the original Star Wars, with the camera never leaving the Death Star.  While its world is technically larger than its predecessors’ it feels like it should be larger still, and that it isn’t is behind many of its issues.

However even as it struggles against its limitations, Dreamfall Chapters remains a singular,  experience, and combined with its predecessors makes for one of my favorite stories ever.  As a conclusion to the story of The Longest Journey, it is as good as it could have been. While exponentially less effective as a stand-alone story, it is nevertheless very much worth playing.

Chapters continues where its predecessor, the first Dreamfall, ended, with things going very badly for its three protagonists. Zoë Castillo, the depressed college dropout from Stark (i.e.: future cyberpunk Earth) who had uncovered and stopped a conspiracy by the WATI mega-corporation to use their upcoming product to observe and steal peoples’ memories via dreams, had been placed into a coma by her mother, after which her consciousness made her way into a realm called Dreamtime. In Arcadia, the world of magic, Kian Alvane, the Azadi apostle who had begun questioning his faith and allegiances to his people, turned against his masters and was arrested for it. April Ryan, protagonist of the first The Longest Journey, who had once saved two worlds and collected more names than Daenerys Targaryen, and currently spent her time fighting the Azadi occupiers in Marcuria, was stabbed and left for dead by Kian’s comrades.

Let’s talk about April first. Were this a TV show or comic book, one would have expected April to somehow survive—the story began with her, after all, and there had been hints suggesting that she would survive until old age and fulfill some yet-unspecified role. What’s more, works that kill off main characters of her stature tend to be ensembles, with a much broader focus than The Longest Journey and Dreamfall. Therefore, it was genuinely surprising that the very first images in Dreamfall Chapters are of April’s funeral. While she’ll continue being important, her story is over. It’s an early and forceful reminder of the sort of story The Longest Journey is. Some people will come out the other side and live happy lives. Not all will do so.

And so, we’re left with Zoë and Kian. In the Dreamtime, Zoë begins to accept her role as a Dreamer, someone with the ability to interact in particular ways with dreams, and in turn alter reality.  She eventually wakes up from her coma sans her memories of the events of the first Dreamfall; reunites with her no-longer-missing ex-boyfriend, investigative reporter Reza Temiz; and the two move from Casablanca, Morocco to Europolis, where Zoë attempts to build a new life for herself while attempting to better her mental state.  Kian’s imprisonment, meanwhile, proves short-lived, as he is rescued by the same Marcurian resistance he’d once worked against, which believes that he will be vital to their efforts. With his only link to this group—April—now dead, he is a fish out of water, and must now get used to working with comrades who have little reason to trust him, all for a cause he is still unsure about.  Since this is fiction, things get complicated: Zoë, during her time as a campaign volunteer, discovers a political conspiracy that, if revealed to the world, would change Europolis’ established order forever; Kian grows more involved in the resistance and in the lives of both its members and the people whom they seek to rescue, and grows closer to figuring out just what the Azadi empire wants with Marcuria, which, as seen in the previous game, involves getting rid of magical beings in a genocidal fashion and installing steampunk machinery everywhere.  As it did in The Longest Journey, what goes on in Stark is related to what is going on in Arcadia and, much like they did in Dreamfall, Zoë and Kian’s stories intertwine, concluding in what is probably the most consciously action-movie like sequence in any of the games, as characters from both worlds work together to end a worlds-changing threat.

The world-changing threat. It’s very abstract.

One vital thing: while it was quite possible to play the first Dreamfall without having played The Longest Journey, the same is not true here. Not only is it essential to play the first Dreamfall in order to understand what is going in Chapters—fair enough, as one is a direct continuation of the other—Chapters also calls back to the original The Longest Journey in a way its predecessor never did, to the point of making familiarity with the game vital.  By the time it ends, Dreamfall Chapters stands revealed as not just the end of Dreamfall, but the end of The Longest Journey as a whole.  All well and good…except for the part where Dreamfall Chapters becomes so focused on ending the stories set up in 2006 and 1999, that it all but forgets to end the story it itself had set up.

While the games in the series have always attempted to give the twin worlds of Stark and Arcadia equal prominence in their narrative, this has never quite worked out in practice. Much like how direct interaction between Earth and Narnia is one way—British children travel to Narnia, but Narnians, with marked exceptions, don’t travel to Britain—Arcadia interacts with Stark more than Stark interacts with Arcadia, meaning that Arcadia consistently ends up becoming the focus of the story. Zoë ends up caring about the Azadi occupation of Marcuria, but April and Kian never become aware of the WATICorp conspiracy, or the electoral conspiracy in Europolis, and they never need to—it’s completely irrelevant to them. This unbalance means that in the end, Zoë’s story is always at risk of being drowned out by everything else, which ends up being the case here, in ways that severely hobble her side of the narrative.

As mentioned, most of Zoë’s story for the first three of the game’s five episodes involves her life in Propast, a life which is intentionally disconnected from her circumstances in the first Dreamfall. While there are moments which deal with her status as a Dreamer, and these moments do hearken back to that first game, those plot developments are also quite personal, meaning they don’t directly affect the people around her.  And to be clear, this is not initially a problem: Propast despite its disconnectedness is in many ways the most interesting area in Dreamfall Chapters. The problem begins in book three, when Zoë decides that the only way she can move forward is to use the Dreammachine, WATICorp’s entertainment device / drug which allows people to dream lucid and controllable dreams, and see if she can’t find answers. As happens in Dreamfall, upon activating it, she finds herself in Marcuria.

Chapters never revisits Propast again.

These two girls never get closure. Did they get to go on that vacation they talked about? Answers! I must have them! (Also, to clarify, they are not in jail.)

After spending Book Four exclusively in Arcadia, Zoë returns to Stark, but not to Europolis. She instead awakens somewhere else entirely, where she spends the entirety of the Book.  Her story shifts, becoming not about the Propast shenanigans that had defined the first half of her story in Chapters, but about her origins and her relationships with her parents, one of the more ambiguous bits of the first Dreamfall.  While interesting in a finally-some-answers way, it also feels like a distraction, like something that happens to Zoë, rather than part of her story.  And it is with this distraction that her story ends: ironically, while the final act of her story focuses entirely on her, and renders arguably the most important single person in Dreamfall, it does so in a way that largely ignores her emotional state and desires shown in Dreamfall Chapters.  And nowhere is this more apparent than in her epilogue, which features Zoë, five years after the events of the game, pregnant in a Casablanca balcony, seemingly at peace, when she is approached by an unseen and unheard person implied to be her romantic partner.  It is a marvel of vagueness, and it’s a sharp contrast to Kian’s own epilogue, which while equally short, is also held up by plenty of additional context giving it weight, and is directly related to events in his story. While I actually quite like the idea of Zoë deciding, at age 26, that she wishes to be a mother—how many videogame protagonists make that choice?—it at the same time irks: it feels like it happened because it’s the only way they could convey change in a twenty-second scene, without additional context. It pretends to be an ending, but it’s simply a different sort of  cliffhanger.

From another perspective, however, Zoë’s ending seemed inevitable. A key feature of Dreamfall Chapters is its choose-your-own adventure elements, which in theory allowed players to directly affect the story and the world.  While this is indeed the case, to a degree, this element also has the effect of forcing the game to compensate for those decisions, crafting its story in a way that allows it to go forward in the intended manner no matter what decisions the players make. It in effect works to eventually make the players’ decisions tangential, and given that Zoë’s choices involve things like her choice of career and how invested she is in her relationship with her boyfriend, it means that the most important parts of her story are also things which can’t play a role in her ending.  As interesting as it to determine how Zoë deals with an unsatisfying relationship, and as interesting as her two career tracks may be, I’m not sure they’re worth it, in the end.   I may change my mind in subsequent playthroughs, but at the moment, I think I might have preferred a more restrictive story in exchange for a conclusion that actually takes notice of Zoë’s consistent struggles with depression and identity.

(On that note, let’s talk Reza. I mentioned in my review of Dreamfall: The Longest Journey how refreshing I found it that Zoë’s search for him seemed divorced from lingering romantic feelings for him, which made the decision to get the two back together for Chapters somewhat bemusing.  While is continued presence makes sense within the narrative and the context of Zoë’s aimlessness and amnesia,  the series makes it frustratingly hard to get a bead on the character or on what makes him tick, which renders him a largely unwelcome presence. While it’s interesting to see the two characters navigate their relationship, there’s really nothing to make the player invested in their success, other than the idea that Zoë should be invested.  Reza is just “the boyfriend”, and in a game that usually does such a good job with its characters, it feels exceedingly frustrating, particularly given his importance.)

(On the other hand, this failure to sell him makes me exceedingly glad about the epilogue’s vagueness.)

Zoë at least gets an ending, which is more than I can say for most of the characters in Propast. What happened to Queenie, the savvy community leader (with an awesome floating tea set) whose support Zoë sought as part of her duties to the Umińska campaign? What happened to Hanna—artist, Dreamer, and de facto leader of the Dragonflies, a Propast teen gang—and how are she and her girlfriend Abby doing? How did Baruti Maphane, the sweetheart campaign manager for the Umińska campaign, deal with news of the election scandal?  How are Mira and Wit—which depending on the players’ choices, are Zoë’s boss and co-worker, respectively—faring?  The most we get is a throwaway line stating that yeah, the forces of truth and justice prevailed and the whole electoral scandal plotline got satisfactorily resolved offscreen­, thanks in part to Zoë’s actions in book two—a stunningly pat resolution in a series that tended to avoid such things, and one that gives Zoë no real sense of catharsis.  Given how their Arcadian counterparts fare, it feels quite unfair.

(On that note, let’s talk Wit, who is the game’s only character on the autistic spectrum.  When the first book was released, the character was at the center of some criticism centering on the fact that his closest relationship was with Mira, who interacted with him using abusive and ableist language in a way that that was nevertheless meant to come off as affectionate, and Just The Way The Two Are. Fair enough, on its own—not everyone can be a paragon, and Mira’s behavior is consistent with her standard operating procedure of berating everyone she interacts with—except that it’s also combined with a complete inability to learn what Wit thinks about it all: direct interaction with him is impossible. Together, these serve to rob Wit of any sort of subjectivity, or any role as the protagonist of his own story: he is as other people make him, never as he makes of himself. While he eventually ends up playing a small, offscreen role in the last book, providing the means with which to crash the steampunk computer currently threatening both worlds, it’s far from a role which contextualizes his character in a way that explains the developers’ choices. It’s baffling, particularly given the games’ episodic nature (which would have allowed for some correction based on feedback and it is by far Dreamfall Chapters’ most glaring and complete storytelling failure.)

Now, there’s a case to be made for Chapters’ mode of storytelling, where incidental details and noodle incidents are not elaborated upon in order to suggest a world larger than the story.  It’s a technique the series has previously used to good effect, such as with The Collapse, the cataclysm that apparently rocked the world between the events of the first two games, whose details are never explained but whose consequences are felt all over Dreamfall’s version of Stark. There is a certain appeal to stories set within the limits of their protagonists’ points of view, and if the resolution to the various Propast plot points had been omitted because the player was only meant to know what Zoë knows, that would have been one thing.  This is not the case, though: throughout the game we see multiple scenes from points of view other than Zoë’s or Kian’s—mostly scenes focusing on the Arcadian bad guy couple of Commander Vamon and Sister Sahya and / or their co-conspirator, the Prophet—indicating that if we don’t see similar scenes for Propast characters, it’s simply because the creators don’t consider their story to be as vital. I disagree.  What’s more, the issue isn’t that things are being left open-ended; it’s that they are closed in an incredibly haphazard manner, suggesting that there was no though put into this story after it stopped being relevant to them, and that makes me sad.

Baddies. We’ll see quite a bit of them, and while their presence is necessary, I also wish we’d gotten more of Baruti.

While the Arcadia story has some of these same issues, it and Kian fare far better, thanks in large part to the fact that their Dreamfall Chapters story is simply a continuation of the story from the first Dreamfall, with no equivalent to Zoë’s time in Propast.  Their story, of the events surrounding the occupation of Marcuria by the Azadi Empire, gets a largely satisfactory end, and do Kian and the people that make up his world.  The big bad is revealed, it is precisely whom everyone thought it would be, and the final confrontation is suitably big, even when it plays out in a very limited space.  Kian’s story is a good one, well told, all the way until the end, in a way that is both satisfying and frustrating, given its counterpart.  While this half of the story, like Zoë’s, features a slew of new characters, they are all integrated within existing contexts, meaning they can feature in Dreamfall Chapters’ endgame in a way characters like Hanna or Nela can’t.

Still, a whole that doesn’t quite work as such, isn’t as fatal as it might have been. The appeal of the series has arguably always lain in the details, and those are as wonderful as they’ve ever been, justifying the price of admission entirely.  While Dreamfall Chapters doesn’t feel as big as it should be, it does a marvelous job of feeling dense, with many, many memorable bits and characters and interactions.  The cities of Marcuria and Propast, while limited, are wonderfully realized, and I could spend countless paragraphs on the various details and people.

A notable element in Dreamfall Chapters is that Propast and Marcuria are in the midst of elections. Propast is preparing for a four-way contest (the front-runners are a far right racist dude and a center-left woman, which feels quite prescient in an American context), while in Marcuria, anti-magical demagogue Onor Hileriss is making a bid for leadership of the City Watch as part of the National Front for Faith and Family (!). Much like in real life, the elections are inescapable, and so you’ll hear the various people who populate the world talk about it. The same occurs in Marcuria, where you’ll see people attending Hileriss’ rallies, commenting on it both positively and negatively, and on occasion letting the candidate know in no uncertain terms just what a terrible piece of shit he is.

It’s not clear without context, but you can see iconography regarding three of the four candidates in this screenshot. Also, I’ll admit that I did not initially notice the Star Wars reference, which is clever from both  Watsonian and Doylist perspectives.

Or, as Richard Cobbett put it:

Put bluntly, and unlike most cyberpunk worlds I’ve seen, just about everything you see [in Propast] is there to reinforce that the people who live here actually give a shit. The main topic of conversation is an upcoming political election, and while it’s pointed out that none of them are going to save the world, there’s a buzz on the streets as everyone discusses their favourite candidates. There are police checkpoints, but there are also big (peaceful) demonstrations protesting them, instead of everyone just rolling over and accepting that things are what they are. There’s no shortage of decay, and at least informed danger when it comes to bad streets and gangsters and the increasing police presence. But there’s also excitement, life, and passion, as well as a cultural mix of everyone from punks with holographic mohawks to girls in mass-produced Bingo T-Shirts. It’s a place you can imagine people choosing to live, not simply being trapped to await death.

(Source: PC Gamer.com)

(Y’all should read that article in full, if you can. It’s one of my favorite pieces of writing about the game.)

While speaking exclusively about Propast in comparison with other Cyberpunk cities, Cobbett’s comments also apply Marcuria, which is in itself a different kind of dystopia—it’s fantasy Vichy France, essentially, in the midst of occupation, apartheid, and genocide—and yet is teeming with people who give a shit about things. Some people give a shit about the occupation and either speak out or join the resistance (whose meeting place the bar The Rooster and Kitten, provides some juvenile but genuine laughs). Some people give a shit about Reapmoon, the upcoming harvest festival which is mostly just now an occasion to be drunk and foolish in public.  Some people give a shit about fingerlings, a one-man play featuring finger puppets which is less dirty than it sounds, performed by a former evil wizard.  Magical creatures brave increasing oppression to fight back, to go on with their lives and sell “sand-witches” and explosives from their sand-witch and explosives shop, or to simply enjoy being children.  Collectively, these characters do a lot to imbue the world with humanity, and interacting with them and the cities they inhabit make for some of Dreamfall Chapters’ best moments.

It always helps, of course, that we have magnificent lead characters with which to experience these worlds, and both Kian and Zoë continue to be superlative.

Look at these two gorgeous dorks. Fall in love with these two gorgeous dorks.

Of the three* protagonists of the The Longest Journey cycle, Zoë has always been closest to my heart; I’ve got lots of space for characters who have no idea what they’re doing in their lives. Much like she was in the original Dreamfall, Zoë is a character adrift: now back where she was a year ago, she’s chosen a life which is at times satisfying and better than nothing, but leaves her wondering if that’s all there is. The people who helped her find out the truth about WATICorp, best friend Olivia DeMarco and former WATI employer and potential love Damien Cavanaugh, both from the first Dreamfall, were killed for helping her, and there’s nothing she can do about it but mourn (and not even that, in Damian’s case). Unlike 99% of the characters who would benefit from one, she’s seeing a therapist, whom she considers flirting with (I didn’t, because ugh). Her employer has her doing busywork that does not make use of her skills or relate to what she hoped to do. She does campaign work, but it’s essentially to keep her busy; her feelings for Lea Umińska go no further than “she sounds better than the alternative”. Her relationship with Reza is in a rough patch, surviving essentially on inertia and lingering feelings.  She has built up a new social circle which includes various friends, and she can enjoy herself on enjoyable occasions, and yet it’s not enough to make her feel satisfied when she’s not doing those things. And yet, she endures, fighting like hell for every piece of happiness she can hold on to. She’s Propast in a nutshell, and I can identify with her quite a lot.

While Zoë is very much still Zoë, Kian, whose comparative lack of screentime and general defensive and terse demeanor had made him the least immediately appealing of the original Dreamfall protagonists, really comes into his own here, as the new focus brings out different sides of him. Most notably, he’s now funny, in a way that makes him more at home in the universe of The Longest Journey while at the same time making him more distinct. Book Three, for example, reveals that his months in Marcuria have given him a taste for yams, to the point where he berates a bunch of rats for not eating the ones he’s left for them (he needs a rat in order to clog up the pneumatic tube system that is at the center of the Azadi’s plans for Marcuria, because that’s the sort of game this is).  It is delightful.

Plus, he’s gay.

There’s a moment in book two where Kian meets with Anna, a sort-of ally in their fight against the Azadi occupiers. Anna clearly knows more about Kian than Kian knows about Anna, and there’s palpable tension between them. After a fraught conversation, the game gives the players a choice: kissing Anna or not kissing Anna.  I chose not to kiss her, not only because doing so would be clichéd, but also because even though the game hadn’t established it and I had no reason to believe it ever would, I wanted Kian to be gay and thus played the game as if he was, canonicity be damned.

Then came Book Three, whose very first scene, a conversation between Kian and either Likho or Enu, two of the game’s new characters and Kian’s new compatriots in the resistance, has Kian opening up about his sexuality.  In the space of a single conversation, Kian, whom I already loved, became one of my favorite characters ever, as well as one that’s important in the context of videogames. He was already one of only a handful of Black protagonists in the medium; as a Black Queer protagonist, he’s downright singular.

(Note: Kian’s sexuality remains the same whether or not you choose to kiss Anna.  The decision to present that as a choice while still explicitly making Kian gay has drawn considerable fire, some from people wishing they could make him not gay, and, more importantly, from people who feel that it is dubious that a gay character is placed in a situation in which 90% of straight characters would never be made to face. For what it’s worth, creator Ragnar Tørnquist has stated that the kiss, if it happens, was not romantic, but more akin to a spontaneous and unwise response to an awkward situation.)

Dreamfall Chapters has been dubbed by detractors as a “SJW” game, and one can see why. There’s a palpable sense that Red Thread Games is consciously attempting to be as inclusive as they know how to be,  detailing the world as they have (it’s worth noting that  Ragnar Tørnquist, the chief person behind the series, is a white dude). Its two* protagonists are people of color. There are tons of women about, in tons of different roles—resistance leaders, smugglers, freedom fighters, geneticists, artists, food-and-explosive vendors, food-and-Marxism vendors, dream addicts, gang members, political candidates—many of them women of color, almost all of them worth meeting. They have different body shapes (although there is not as much variation as I’d like, with fatter people being almost nonexistent) and are not depicted or presented according to the male gaze. One of the people you see over and over and over again in Propast—by which I mean that she’s an extra, rather than someone with a unique character model—is a hijabi woman with neon-colored highlights on her headscarf. I love that she is there. There are multiple non-straight characters—as mentioned, there’s Kian, there’s Likho, who is apparently bisexual (my choices meant I didn’t get to interact with him as much I could have, so I didn’t get to see the conversation where this is revealed or know its details) and serves as a pseudo-love interest for Kian, there’s Hanna and Abby, and there’s a generalized attempt to combat heteronormativity—there’s a sense that characters’ default sexuality isn’t “straight”, but rather “unknown until it isn’t”, which is how it should be. In a touch I love, Propast has queer bars, although like all but a handful of buildings, you can’t enter them.  The game is far from perfect—I mentioned Wit earlier, and I understand that some people are disappointed in the way Likho’s story is resolved—but it’s clear Red Thread is trying: Chapters is better at it than the original The Longest Journey, which was already better than most games in 1999, and whatever Red Thread Games’ next thing is, I’d expect it to be better still.

This was tweeted by Red Thread Games for international women’s day this year. Note that this not actually the game’s entire female cast.

And thing is, it’s not just that these characters are collectively diverse; it’s that that diversity makes them individually and collectively awesome.  The cast of Dreamfall Chapters is fantastic largely in part because we haven’t seen stories like theirs in videogames, and the two things are related. It is because the writers don’t believe that people have to fit in these constricting little boxes in order for their stories to be worth telling that we have characters like sweetest zhidling Enu, who is there being talkative and friendly and awesome without being forced into any of the boxes female characters are usually smooshed into. It is because the series isn’t married to toxic masculinity that Kian is as wonderful as he is. And it is because we have such variation than when we do have characters who fit into the same old archetypes, they do so without necessarily saying anything about a particular group.

This is Enu. She is sweet and funny and exists for no other reason except to make the world better with her presence.

And then there’s Saga.

(Note: Character and ending spoilers ahead)

Despite its name, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey was in many ways a tale completely separate from the game that preceded it. It made use of characters and concepts introduced there, but it did so largely to tell entirely new stories, to the point where one could, as mentioned earlier, play Dreamfall without first having played The Longest Journey and not lose anything, or at least anything that couldn’t be replaced by something of equal value. The same cannot be said of Dreamfall Chapters, which brings back concepts from the 1999 game in a big way, and none more significantly than the House of All Worlds.

Both framing device and mystery, The House of All Worlds and its inhabitant, Lady Alvane (!), appeared three times in The Longest Journey. The first and third are halves of a whole; we see Lady Alvane at the beginning of the game as she is about to tell the story of April Ryan to her visitors, and then we see her at the end when she finishes said story.  What makes this more than just a framing device is an appearance by Crow, the talking bird who had served as April’s companion in Arcadia (and who will later become both Zoë and Kian’s companion in the same way) and who we learn had a similar relationship with Lady Alvane during their younger days.  This raised two questions: if Alvane is an older April—the simplest theory—then what is the reason for the “Lady Alvane” moniker? On the other hand, if Alvane was not April,  how did her relationship with Crow come about, and why should we care about it, and her?  Then there was the House’s second appearance, which is seen from April Ryan’s point of view, after she accidentally arrives there. April talks briefly to Lady Alvane, Lady Alvane imparts some sage advice about how to April can embrace and control her budding abilities as a Shifter (someone able to travel between Stark and Arcadia under their own power) and that’s essentially it.  After Dreamfall: The Longest Journey came out, a third question was added to the list: what, if any, was Lady Alvane’s relationship to Kian?

The House of All Worlds returns in Dreamfall Chapters, and it is within its walls that we meet the girl named Saga, whose story is at once both tangential and vital to the goings-on in Stark and Arcadia. Taking place in chapters specifically identified as interludes, we see Saga first as a toddler, and then as a child, teenager, adult, and finally as an old woman.

The Saga segments are short, and they’re not especially plot-sensitive or exciting—the first one consists entirely of Saga toddling from her room to the House’s living room, the second of child Saga horsing around as she picks up the drawings she’s left all around the house. As these scenes occur, we learn about her and her family, and how her life has changed with time.  Her mother, blue-skinned victory-roll-sporting book-writer Etta, a Midgardian, disappears between the first two sequences, lost somewhere in time and space. Saga’s father, Magnus, proves increasingly unable to deal, and increasingly paranoid about Saga’s budding ability to shift, to the point of using magic on the house to make her unable to use her powers to leave the domicile. The closest thing to relevance is the increasing evidence that Saga has some sort of connection to April, remembering as she does events from the first game, but it’s not clear what the connection is. If she is April reincarnated, then she is to April as Korra is to Aang; despite similarities—a shared interest in art, most notably—they’re different people, and their link is far from the most interesting thing about either of them.

The Longest Journey has always been a woman-centric series, and Saga’s story feels like the natural continuation of that, in a very specific way. In a medium where female protagonists are rarely outside the fifteen-to-forty age range (and even then, they tend to look like act as if they’re twenty-to-thirty-five) and even more rarely fill roles other than violent badasses, love interests, damsels in distress, and / or male gaze bait, that we get a focus on a woman throughout her whole life, doing toddler and child and teenager things, feels significant and unprecedented. Sure, she’s doing so in the context of one of the series’ mysteries, but even still: normally, this would all be backstory. Here, it’s the actual story. And while Saga does eventually get involved in the goings-on of Dreamfall Chapters, Dreamfall Chapters is little more than a footnote in Saga’s story, which is less about saving the world and more about growing up and growing old. It feels intensely personal and melancholy in a way few videogame stories do.

Saga herself is unlike any of the protagonists that preceded her.  Unlike April or Zoë, who lived on mundane Stark before the call to adventure swept them away, she is unfazed by weirdness, having grown up in a fully-furnished transdimensional domicile subject to temporal shifts and transdimensional tears that was nevertheless painfully normal and mundane. While sheltered in more immediate and significant ways than Kian, having spent the 99% of her first thirteen years in a world of exactly four people, she is also the one most open to new experiences and circumstances. Interestingly enough, she has rather specific knowledge of her future, but unlike most characters with Destinies (TM), she goes along with it without reluctance or angst; when we meet her at age 35, she is returning to the House so that she can prepare herself to fulfilling a prophecy, which she does despite having no real personal stakes in it with a certain detached enthusiasm. In other words, she’s a fatalist, but without the pessimism that usually implies. That she knows she lives to a ripe old age probably helps.

(Saga’s knowledge of the future also allows Dreamfall Chapters to use her to casually hand out whatever answers it doesn’t have time or resources to show. The game’s conclusion is very Pretty Little Liars in that way.)

One thing I haven’t mentioned so far is how Dreamfall Chapters fares as a videogame, partly because it feels less than entirely relevant, and partly because I lack the language with which to comment on it. It’s an adventure game, and I can’t comment how well it does adventure game things in comparison to other modern entries in the genre like Life is Strange.

That said, I can compare Chapters to the original Dreamfall, and in that respect it does…alright, correcting some of the issues that made the 2006 original a terrible videogame and inventing new ones. Most notably, Chapters feels considerably more like a game than the original Dreamfall did: it no longer feels as if one is walking from cutscene to cutscene.  It also abandons what is probably that games’ biggest failed experiment, namely the combat and action sequences, replacing the latter with Quick-Time Events, where one needs to find the proper element to interact with in a short window of time—these can sometimes be obtuse, and there’s one in particular that I solved even though I still don’t know why.  Puzzles are more plentiful and challenging—almost too challenging, in parts, particularly on occasions where there is the whole city to explore and little clue as to where to proceed. It is in these cases where the openness of the world works against it, especially since this is the sort of game where running, while possible, just feels wrong.

Graphically, the game looks fine at worst and absolutely freaking gorgeous at best, although it’s worth noting that my point of reference is 2008, and that I generally believe there was little need for console generations after the PS3 / X-Box 360 era. As mentioned, the main cities look fantastic.  Zoë and Kian and adult Saga are all yum. One thing worth noting, at least that the lip syncing, in my experience at least, was crap, although it did get considerably better in the last book, and has improved in subsequent playthroughs. It may have just been my computer.

The voice acting, on the other hand, is uniformly great. People who played the original Dreamfall will quickly notice that a lot of key characters, including both Zoë and Kian, have been recast, which is an issue for about two minutes.  That said, it’s a damn good thing Roger Raines was able to return for third stint as Crow. Crow is the closest thing the series has to an iconic character, and his voices and cadences are extremely distinctive, so any replacement would have felt just wrong.  Similarly, I’m extremely grateful that Sarah Hamilton was able to return to play April yet again, even if her work consisted only of a handful of lines. I understand that voice acting is no longer a thing Hamilton does on the regular, and that she’d been recovering from a recent serious health issues around the time the game began production, so I really appreciate that she took the time for the fans.

I mentioned that Dreamfall Chapters is just as much a conclusion to the whole universe of The Longest Journey as it is to itself, and nowhere is this more notable than in the ending. The game’s final scene features Saga, now an old woman familiar to players of the original game, as she prepares to receive a visitor. Given control one final time, there’s not a lot for the player to do here except go around the living room and observe Saga as she takes note of the various mementos and remembrances of a long life well lived, some of which hearken back to  people and events we know we know and some we don’t. It’s a very effective scene, one that feels appropriate for the end of a story seventeen years in the telling; much like Saga’s life, the story of The Longest Journey has been extensive and eventful, and taking a moment to look back and rest in comfort feels like an ideal thing to do, after everything.  There are what-could have-beens and regrets, sure, both in-universe and out—its notable that the original Kickstarter for Dreamfall Chapters suggested that Red Thread had another game in the series in them, should the funding be available; that game has since been scrapped—but the finale feels optimistic, despite its melancholy atmosphere.

And really, that’s The Longest Journey in a nutshell. It’s a world where terrible things can happen. People die. People lose their way. Living can sometimes seem pointless.  And yet that doesn’t stop it from being funny and inspiring and beautiful.  While Dreamfall is not the first game to make this argument, it is still the one that does so most memorably.

—-

Game: Dreamfall Chapters (Full Game)

Developer / Publisher: Red Thread Games

Creator / Director: Ragnar Tørnquist

Platforms: PC

Release Dates: Oct. 21, 2014 (Book 1) – June 17, 2016 (Book 5)

Despite the name, Shitbot is…well, he’s still kind of shitty. He’s also amazing.

The fireball is how you know the wine is classy.

Note: This is the closest Chapters gets to assigning a sexuality to Saga. Note to Hollywood: compulsory heterosexuality isn’t.

This is the aforementioned Baruti Maphane, listening to Zoë talk about the sun. There is nothing about his look that I don’t love. He is an inspiration.

The most important screenshot in the game, because it is the one with my name.

We never see exactly what began Kian’s love affair with yams, but I imagine it was suitably epic.

If it weren’t for the institutionalized racism, Marcuria would be awesome to live in. It’s like a lot of places that way.

There are several recurring locations in the series; the Journeyman Inn and its surrounding street is, if I’m not mistaken, the one location that appears in all three games.

Enu is brave and has no chill. Pass it on.

The shipper’s non-dilemma.

The best screenshot I could take of the aforementioned hijabi extra. That it takes place in Propast’s souk is a coincidence—versions of her appear all through the city.

A self-portrait by teen Saga.

Zoë in the Dreamtime.

When first introduced, Onor Hileriss was ridiculous and satirical.

Propast’s sole visible lesbian bar, the Pub-lick, and an extra with a fantastic holographic mohawk.God, I love this city. 

…and Pub-lick’s men-oriented counterpart. I’m not familiar with either scene, so I have no idea how tacky these names are. “Very”, I’d imagine. Still, maybe tacky is in in 2220.

Selling magical products in Marcuria is now prohibited. The people have since adapted. 

The aforementioned Wit. Ugh, this dynamic. Why is Zoë assuming that Wit is okay with things?  Ask him! Make sure!

Baby Saga. The portrait in the back is of Etta, her mother.

Marcuria prepares for Reapmoon, its harvest festival.

Cuties.

Goats!

Social media in 2220. which is really just social media in 2016.

Old Saga.

Wonkers, like all watillas, straddles the line between toy and friend, with all the uncomfortable things that suggests.

Zoë has Wonkers. Saga has Hugsy. Kian, we eventually find out, had a pet rat which later abandoned him for a new owner.

Chapters takes place across several months, so we see Marcuria and Propast undergo changes as time passes. The introduction of electricity to Marcuria is one of them, and helps explain just how the Azadi managed to conquer it in the first place.

(Series-wide spoilers below)

There’s a certain amount of cognitive dissonance required in order to accept La Femme Nikita’s premise on its own terms. The series wants us to believe that clandestine intelligence agency / assassination bureau Section One is necessary in order to ensure the world’s safety, and that its work somehow justifies the monstrous way the group operates. At the same time, everything the series tells us about the Section suggests that such a claim isn’t factual. It obtains its “recruits” via kidnapping and dehumanization, which belies its alleged legitimacy—surely an above-board agency would be able to obtain agents some other, less illegal, way. It lies to and manipulates its people constantly, not because of a need to keep information properly classified, but to keep them compliant. Its oversight appears to include no one connected to any government entity anywhere, or anyone who is themselves subject to oversight. And yet, in order for the series to work, one has to choose to disregard all of this, and believe that the Section lies about everything but is completely honest about its agenda.

It’s hard to understate how significant this is to the series. If the Section isn’t working for the greater good—if that claim is just another one of its countless lies—then the story simply falls apart. There’s no reason to care about Nikita’s fate, or to consider her anything other than a great big fool, in addition to an accomplice to continued abuse. And while mitigating factors exist due to her status as a prisoner and victim, those become much less mitigating once she manages to escape, scot-free, and then decides to return. Similarly, there’s no reason to wish for any of the characters to succeed. And while this element of uncertainty was always baked into the premise’s cake—there is every reason to be just as skeptical of the agency in Luc Besson’s original film—that original version manages to get away with it because Anne Parillaud’s Nikita, by and large, doesn’t care about what she does except insofar as it affects her. It is only in the TV series, where the agency and its manipulation of Nikita (Peta Wilson) became central, that its role in the world becomes truly relevant. And yet, the show proves ambivalent at best on this point, seeming uninterested in providing evidence about the good the Section allegedly does. The largely episodic and insular storytelling makes it hard to get a bead on the long-term consequences of the Section’s actions, and the vague world-building—to the point where the Section doesn’t defend any one nation, but rather “the West”—makes it impossible to determine with precision whose interests the Section is supposed to be aligned with, leaving us only with the assertions of proven manipulators with no incentive to tell the truth. How can we trust then, that the people behind Section One aren’t simply using their people for their own personal gain?  So important is this question, that J.J. Abrams, intentionally or not, based half the initial premise of Alias on it.

At the same time, the question is in many ways irrelevant. Even if the Section is on the level about the effects of its activities, it is still an organization that kidnaps people and forces them to become assassins at gunpoint, abuses them into submission, and does so without reason. The show is still about abusers, their victims, and the way the latter turn into the former, and tells their story in a way that normalizes that abuse and justifies it by claiming it is for the best and trying to get us to care for the abusers and disregard the abused unless their name is Nikita. No matter what good they do, the people in Section are still Bad People. While the writers appear to understand this, to some degree—the show’s original ending, in an attempt to right Nikita’s ledger, retcons seasons’ worth of stories to assert that she had been a double agent ever since her return—but it’s too little, too late. At this point, the series has invested too much in its narrative, spent too much time downplaying the effects of the Section’s abuse and playing up Nikita’s non-consensual relationship with her immediate superior Michael (Roy Dupuis) as a romance, for any attempts to reverse course to really land. It’s easier to believe that the series intended to portray a dystopia, and that the original point of the series was to show Nikita’s slide into corruption—except that if that were the case, then the logical thing to have done would have been to at some point resolve the ambiguity and answer the question about the Section’s value in the negative, only to have Nikita not care.  That the show never pulled that particular trigger is as solid as indication as any that, despite everything, it still wanted us to see Nikita as a sympathetic hero.

Why bring this up? Because of the way the second Nikita TV show, developed by Craig Silverstein for the CW, turns this narrative on its head, addressing its predecessors’ ethos in a way that makes for a surprisingly compelling story about abuse.

Prior to 2010, one of the more notable things about the various retellings of Nikita is how closely they hewed to the original film. The largely pointless 1993 American remake Point of No Return replicates the original’s beats with no ideas of its own except to sand off the characters’ edges. While La Femme Nikita makes important changes to the narrative—its Nikita is not actually a killer before she is made into one by the Section, and displays none of the original’s antisocial, violent behavior, marking her unambiguously as a victim—its pilot is essentially an abridged retelling of the film, with the remaining sequences adapted in subsequent episodes. Over time, this repetition has given the story and its various beats an element of iconicity: Nikita’s story isn’t simply the story of a woman turned assassin, but the story of a woman who is arrested and convicted for the murder of a policeman; wakes up in a room where her handler tells her of her funeral and gives her a non-choice; begins her training with the organization’s personnel, including a computer expert, a quartermaster, and a woman who schools her on femininity; finishes her training; is taken to a restaurant for what she believes is a celebration but is actually her final test; completes the mission; attempts to use the established exfil route only to find that it is blocked; escapes via the kitchen, starting a fire and escaping via a garbage chute; is taken to her new apartment and given a cover identity; dresses up as a maid for her first official mission; gets a civilian boyfriend; is asked during a “vacation” to assassinate someone with a sniper rifle hidden in her hotel room bathroom, a mission she completes while her oblivious boyfriend talks to her from outside. Therefore, when Nikita presents a story that completely skips Nikita’s time in the organization and picks up three years after her escape, it’s unprecedented. It’s a new story in a franchise which is more-than-usually averse to those.

Not that Nikita’s plot can precisely be called new. While its story avoids the territory trod by its predecessors, it does so by following in the footsteps of another series, the aforementioned Alias, to an uncanny degree. Adopting that series’ premise of “what if the spy agency was lying about being an anti-terrorism group” wholesale, the series frames the organization, now called Division, as Nikita’s core enemy, and its destruction, and the rescue of the people it has tricked into working for it, as her chief goals. Further solidifying the parallels, Nikita (Maggie Q) attempts to carry her vendetta out by means of Alex (Lyndsy Fonseca), a younger woman trained by Nikita to infiltrate Division and serve as her woman on the inside, and who is in many ways the  Sydney Bristow to Nikita’s SpyDaddy. It is through Alex that Nikita goes through the expected scenes—the meeting with Michael (angry otter Shane West) the training sequences the meeting with Amanda (Melinda Clarke), graduation. These don’t all go the way they traditionally do, but then, that’s part of the point.

While Nikita’s setup mirrors past shows’, Alex is an entirely new element. Suddenly Nikita has a Robin to her Batman, and specifically a Dick Grayson; seeing herself in the fellow survivor, abuse victim and recovering addict, Nikita attempts to take her in and protect her, until Alex decides that it’d be best for them both if she entered Division. Nikita decides to train Alex, not so that Alex can become like her, but so that she can go through Division without doing so. Alex, then, represents an opportunity for Nikita to transmute the terrible gift Division gave her into something good.

That terrible gift is at the center of the new Nikita: Division, hearkening back to the original film, is considerably less hellish than La Femme Nikita’s Section One, and is a place that actually delivers on its promise of self-improvement, for a price. While it made Nikita into an assassin—she was already a killer—and made her unable to rejoin society under her own name, it also gave her the discipline and self-esteem necessary to stay clean and stand on her own two feet, and this, in turn, adds a layer of complexity to her struggle.  Yes, Division is evil. Not everything it does has ill effects. It is for this reason why I have little respect for those who claim the series did away with its predecessor’s complexity in making Division the enemy. Yes, this version is less dark, but the additional light allows for more defined shadows.  Where the abuse  La Femme Nikita’s existed on the surface—say what you will about the Section, but it always wore its hellishness on its sleeve (except when it didn’t)—Nikita’s is more effective in large part because it is designed to feel like nurturing. Consequently, this allows arguments like those of Division mental health specialist / mother figure Amanda (Melinda Clarke) to carry weight its counterpart never had.

Amanda: What are you doing here Nikita? I didn’t kill Daniel. I didn’t kill Ryan.

Nikita: (Sarcastically) Oh, I’m so grateful!

Amanda: You should be on your knees! I saved your life! When you came to me you were nothing—a foster kid tossed by the system. But I made you better. I made you amazing! And what did you do to repay me? You broke my heart.

Nikita: You think you gave me some kind of gift? You took a messed-up girl and you made her a broken woman. You told me I was beautiful and you told me that I was special.

Amanda: You were.

Nikita: You lied! You took me from one hellhole and you put me in another. And then you dressed me up all pretty and served me up to them, just like my foster mother did. I broke your heart? You broke mine.

(Episode 2.18: “Power”)

This right here is the difference between both shows. One can easily make the case that Amanda loved Nikita as much as LFN’s Michael loved Nikita; with the exception of the explicit physical attraction, they express their feelings the same way. And yet, where La Femme Nikita saw that love as a mitigating factor, Nikita sees it as an aggravating one.  Where the first show was patriarchal, constantly affirming that male authority figures knew best, Nikita is a choice that leaves that up to individuals. Perhaps why the characters in the latter series manage to seem happier, in general.

Worth noting is that Amanda’s abuse of Nikita is a reflection of the abuse she herself suffered at the hands of her father, who tortured her every day as part of the “important work” of creating a better soldier and thus gave her her own version of the terrible gift: the suffering would instill in her an interest in the human brain she would pursue for the rest of her life, combined with a casual disregard for “first do no harm”, both which made her a genius pioneer in her field. Years later, she uses her own version of those techniques on Nikita, and still later on Alex, who everyone sees as her natural successor.  Together, the three women form Nikita’s very solid thematic core: theirs is a story of abuse, and how one can either perpetuate it, or work to heal it.

A side bonus to all this new focus on the three women is that Michael is turned into something of a secondary character. He’s still around and hella important—he, Nikita and Alex are the only characters to appear in every episode—but he’s not the only source of relationship drama available to the series, which allows the writers to do something different with him. With Division not being a 24/7 garbage nightmare, the character is allowed to loosen up and become its version of Tami Taylor, the character who gets to be genuinely concerned for the people under him and works to meet their interests. In other words, he’s not a take on La Femme Nikita’s Michael, but a take on its version of Nikita, or at least the person that version of Nikita wished she could be, and this makes his impulse to protect Nikita ring truer than his counterpart’s; he doesn’t do it just because he feels something for her, but because he sees it as the right thing to do.

Perhaps more important, though, is a shift in the power dynamics between the characters. La Femme Nikita’s Michael, in a sharp deviation with the character who inspired him, was consistently placed in a position of dominance. He was a better agent than Nikita (he was regarded as unquestionably the Section’s most skilled agent as late as the show’s final season) had more power and independence, and would best Nikita in any of their encounters.  This, in turn, made the romance between him and Nikita a dubiously consensual one: consent isn’t valid when saying no could mean cancellation, and you can’t claim to be protecting someone when “protection” means “leave her in a hellhole where she’ll have to fight the same battle all over again the next day”.  And so, their romance never felt like one—a fatal detail, given that it formed the show’s core.

Nikita again turns all of these dynamics on their head. While Michael is the more experienced agent, Nikita is the more talented one. It is Nikita who has freedom and autonomy, while Michael remains in a job which he knows is compromising his soul but can’t easily leave, for his sake and the sake of those under him. What’s more, the two are always at ease around each other: they don’t always tell each other the truth—although it’s worth noting that Michael is consistently the less tight-lipped of the two—but they know where each other stands.  This means that when the two characters get together, seventeen episodes (!!!) into the series, they manage to have what is, somewhat shockingly, one of the more functional relationships on TV. While not entirely melodrama-free, they also get through things that would have broken up 98% of other television couples, and they do so thanks to a very feminist willingness to communicate often—very often—about their feelings and concerns.  Where the older show made the two characters’ relationship one that was very much about glances and touches and lingering—which, make no mistake, worked like gangbusters if one was inclined to support the pairing—the relationship in Nikita is very much about conversation and banter. Where there is non-verbal interplay, it is more playful—smirks and smiles and moments of visual comedy.  They’re less like Bella Swann and Edward Cullen and more like Batman and Catwoman.

Given how well Nikita does with romance, it’s perhaps not surprising that it also does very well with other sorts of relationships television often falters with—namely, platonic relationships between canonically shippable characters. Throughout its four seasons, Nikita surrounds its main character with lots (and lots and lots) of dudes, many of which are to some degree or another attracted to Nikita.  Where a lot of shows would use these characters to create Unresolved Sexual Tension and thus complicate the various friendships and romances, here we actually see Nikita form incredibly deep and emotionally affecting bonds with people like computer hacker Seymour Birkoff (Aaron Stanford) and C.I.A. analyst Ryan Fletcher (Noah Bean), bonds which clearly involve an element of love, but not romance.  Even when both characters end up kissing Nikita, everyone clearly knows where they all stand, and the moments pass with none of the awkwardness that would follow in a different show. Then there’s Owen Elliot (Devon Sawa), a Division agent tasked with protecting one of the six black boxes—hard drives containing evidence of every mission undertaken by Division, and which keep its Director, Percy (Xander Berkeley), safe to manipulate and blackmail without fear of retaliation—and the first person to switch to Nikita’s side. Of the show’s cast members, he’s the one most often positioned as a romantic rival for Nikita’s affection, but even then, it’s clear that such a perception has nothing to do with the way he and Nikita act around each other—neither ever expresses any interest in pursuing something—and everything to do with the way sexism trains people to believe that mutual concern cannot exist between hetero pairings without there being sexual interest behind it.

And finally, there is, once again, Alex. Lyndsy Fonseca earned quite a bit of buzz a couple of years ago for her turn as Angie Martinelli in Agent Carter, and particularly for her sparky friendship with protagonist Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell). Shades of that relationship can be seen in Nikita, which is at its most adorable when the two characters are together. Were Nikita and Michael’s relationship not so well depicted, it would have been the easiest thing in the world to ship the two women, problematic undertones (having to do with, again, the way the relationship is a reflection of the past abusive relationship between Nikita and Amanda) be damned. As is, however, we still have a relationship that is mutually supportive and warm, and which makes them both better, happier people. Their relationship makes the show, and the creators understand this perfectly, expertly mixing plenty of sticks—they spend a lot of time apart—with very large carrots, the latter which include glorious once-a-season sequences where Nikita and Alex work together to fuck shit up, which are always a highlight.

Of course, the reason this all works is because Nikita the character loves easily, and this inspires the people who follow her—assassins, one and all, but damn if you don’t want to root for them, in a way that suggests, again, that Division wasn’t all a lie: in the end, it did create some truly amazing people. Not only are they a well-oiled machine—not unexpected, given how they share lots of formative experiences—they also have lots of chemistry, and the show manages to get something worthwhile out of pretty much every pairing it explores.

If Nikita were only notable because of its characters and their interactions, then that by itself would have been enough to make it notable.  However, what truly made it stand out among similar shows like Alias, Person of Interest, or its predecessor was its storytelling, and particularly the way it could tell a complex story with many constantly moving pieces, and yet never got lost among them.

Consider Nikita’s initial goal of getting rid of Division and Percy. It’s the sort of open-ended target that could take five episodes to solve, or five seasons, most likely the latter. More importantly, though, it is the sort of quest that, if not defined right, could result in a story where the ending could easily feel unearned, with the characters making no visible progress until the endgame, during which there is suddenly very quick, arbitrary-feeling success. Person of Interest, despite a generally excellent sense of progression, did this with its Samaritan arc, where much emphasis was placed on Team Machine’s ever-decreasing chances of survival until the final few episodes, when suddenly Samaritan can be defeated by a computer virus that had apparently always existed. While Alias’ resolution to its initial premise works to a large degree because of the way it comes about when no one expects it, it is also the sort of story development which makes the surrounding story feel lesser, once one thinks about it. Yes, a story that ends too early is better than one that ends too late, but still, when we’re sold a complex-time consuming goal, having it be solved in one episode entirely due to factors introduced in that episode feels a lot like cheating.

Which brings us to the brilliance of the black boxes. There’s six of them (plus one held by Percy), spread around the globe, and protected by Guardians like Owen, and until they’re destroyed or captured, Percy cannot be eliminated. They’re essentially horcruxes—the show admits as such—and while such an element feels more Zelda than James Bond, it adds a sense of structure that is invaluable to the story, giving every part of it weight. When Percy finally gets dealt with, the timing feels right; it feels like the natural culmination of everything that has been happening up until that moment.

Nikita uses this structure frequently—there’s six black boxes; six members of Oversight, the government people who secretly and illegally fund Division; thirty members of the group called, um, the Dirty Thirty.  It’s not hard to see why they like it, though: it gives the good guys something concrete to go after, but more importantly, it gives the bad guys clear losing conditions.

Also importantly, this focus on concrete numbers lets us know exactly where everyone stands in the game at any given time, a piece of transparency which is absolutely vital to the series’ narrative ethos. Whereas La Femme Nikita trained the viewer to doubt everything, and Alias tied itself in knots with its twists and reversals, Nikita’s instinct is to play fair with its audience. While it does twists, it doesn’t do mysteries: it’s always clear why people are doing things, and questions raised tend to be answered an episode or two after they’re raised, if not sooner.

What the series does do, however, is give us a bunch of pieces, which, while not terribly elaborate, are both distinct and versatile, giving the show the ability to use a lot of them at once without ever bogging the story down in detail. This means, for example, that the series can shift goalposts and status quo with unequaled ease, to the point where Wham episodes come around roughly every five episodes. This is perhaps most notable in the show’s second season, whose first half features a conflict featuring no less than five concrete factions—team Nikita, Division, team Percy, Oversight, and Gogol, Division’s Russian equivalent—with several more sub-groups and alliances, and whose makeups could shift on an almost episode-by-episode basis, while never becoming hard to follow or allowing the audience to forget where everybody is on the board.

Normally, that sort of pacing and openness carries the risk of essentially ending the story or leaving it with no place to go too soon, and some could argue that this happens to the series (I disagree). Fortunately, the writers are skilled in mining its own past for new ideas, in a way that makes the series feel incredibly coherent all the way through.  When the story ends, after four seasons (in an extremely fortunate manner, too: the series was technically cancelled after the third season, but given one last six-episode to tie up the story) it feels precisely as long as it needs to be, and tells the story it needs to tell: the story of a woman who rebuilds her life after years of abuse and dehumanization.

Two details help the series in smaller, but significant way ways. First, the show features a somewhat more realistic, nuanced view of the world than this genre tends to feature. Where La Femme Nikita was too insular to give us more than a glimpse of the state of its post-Cold War and pre-9/11 world, and Alias believed that the thing that united every country was their shared affinity for nightclubs, Nikita’s is a world where the biggest prize is an energy company, human trafficking is rampant, and government finds itself at the mercy of corporations. While still very much spy-fi, with all the super-science that entails, it is grounded in a world that feels, well, grounded. It’s more Casino Royale than Moonraker, and this is especially noticeable in the way the series deals with money. When Percy begins turning Division into a guns-for-hire group, it is partly to make up for budget cuts. When Nikita and Michael go on the run, they’re forced to steal from illegal casinos for funds, and Michael at one moment notes that they have to decide between buying bullets or food. It’s a realistic note that adds a lot to the show and makes it easy to keep characters motivated in ways that make sense and don’t require much elaboration.

The second detail, on the other hand, pertains to something that should be taken for granted, but often can’t, and that is the series’ ability to make the various characters seem as capable as they are purported to be. Nikita is meant to be good at everything, and she feels that way; ditto Alex. Birkoff, despite specializing in computer engineering, is also a capable hand-to-hand combatant, as he would be, given that he is supposed to have gone through Division’s comprehensive training before specializing. When Nikita scores a series of consecutive victories against Division, it’s not because Division isn’t capable, but because it is dealing with an unknown unknown in the form of Alex, whose existence they suspect but can’t confirm because Nikita and Alex have taken proactive measures to throw them off the track. When Amanda successfully wages asymmetrical warfare against Nikita, she is successful not because Nikita is doing anything wrong, but because their positions carry inherent and specific advantages and disadvantages, which Amanda knows how to exploit. What’s more, while the series makes it clear that Amanda is making strategic mistakes, this does not take away her ability to make tactically sound decisions. The same extends to our more mundane characters, like the F.B.I., C.I.A., and Army, which can be formidable and dangerous when they wish to be. And like I said, this should not be a surprise; however, given that Alias featured a C.I.A. woefully incapable of keeping hold of anything or anyone in their possession or custody, and La Femme Nikita insisted that the Section was formidable despite its tendency to play with dynamite, it’s downright shocking to see characters being consistently competent.

Nikita isn’t perfect. For a series whose story is the relationship between three women, and features a woman of color as its protagonist, it features a serious lack of diversity. Only four of its regular cast are women, compared with seven men, and after its first season, the former never outnumber the latter.  Among those eleven regulars, only two are people of color, and only one is around for more than a season. The supporting cast is similarly skewed, and while the series has a high mortality rate in general, it’s hard not to notice that by the time it ends, surviving prominent characters of color can be counted on one hand. Equally as noticeable is the fact that the series is extremely heteronormative, with absolutely zero characters who present as anything other than straight—a worse record, even, than the original series’.— While subtext can  definitively be found—see the above conversation between Nikita and Amanda—nothing is done with it, even when it would have made the characters stronger. That Alex is not canonically queer is easily the show’s second biggest misstep.

Particularly disappointing is the fact that, despite being set in a universe where nobody disputes a woman’s ability to kick ass, a lot of the people doing ass-kicking are still men. While Division’s pool of nameless recruits approaches something like gender balance, that balance is lost once they become nameless agents, with guards and Alpha Teams—the standard Division mooks, and the ones most likely to see action—being uniformly male, with women being relegated to desks. It is only when female agents become essential to the plot that we see them, which is disappointing.  While it’s possible that this may be partly because of a disparity between available stuntmen vs. available stuntwomen—a scene where Nikita faces against Division recruits suggests this is the case, as the only woman in the scene who we see actually fighting Nikita is Jaden (Tiffany Hines), a member of the regular cast—this still doesn’t explain the inconsistency: there are still stuntwomen in the industry the show could have hired.

Similarly, it’s disappointing to see that there are no disabled people around Division, which is quite unrealistic, given the amount of hurt the average field agent goes through. Unless we’re to assume they are perpetually off-screen, the only possible in-show explanation is that those agents are summarily canceled, which would have been perfectly believable for Section One but doesn’t fit the Division M.O. There’s an excellent (read: open-and-shut) case to be made for the idea that writing which does not take diversity into account is often bad writing, and this is a notable example of that: in neglecting this element of its world-building, the series becomes badly positioned when it decides to disable one of its regular characters. While the story has loads of potential, it never quite works.

Still, it is worth noting that Nikita does some things especially well. While people of color are not well-represented, Nikita herself, as the show’s star, gets developed with care, consistency  and nuance women of color on TV are rarely granted. She gets constantly validated by the narrative and other characters.  While she helps out a lot of people—she’s a hero, after all—she often needs help, and is given it, with no suggestion that this lessens her.  She has several potential love interests, and even more people who love her. She never lacks for focus. She gets to be a person. Also notable is the fact that, while rape and sexual abuse are key to the series—a vital element to Alex’s story is the fact that she spent years as a sex slave, and what little we learn of Nikita’s past suggests a history of sexual abuse—the show itself trusts the audience to understand these things without including potentially triggering scenes of rape or attempted rape. More superficially, the series has some of the best action scenes in TV. Thanks to Maggie Q, whose wheelhouse is action and stunt-work and is above all a capital-P Professional, the series really sells Nikita and the people in her world as super-capable fighters, with a lot of gasp-worthy fighting.

Nikita aired from 2010 to 2013, smack dab in the middle of the Obama presidency, and although he doesn’t figure in the story—the plot eventually involves the President’s office in ways which don’t permit him to occupy it—this feels like the right story for his White House (and, given the show’s “stronger together” ethos, the current Hillary Clinton campaign). Like Obama, Nikita and her loved ones seek change, while understanding that in the face of implacable opposition, compromise—tactical and moral—is often the only option: all too often, victory means accepting the possible over the ideal.  And like Obama, this realism does not diminish the show’s fundamental optimism: while La Femme Nikita was a story about being broken down, Nikita is a story that is fundamentally about the possibility of changing and becoming better. In the end, Nikita and her people are not super-heroes: they cannot stop all the bad guys just because they are skilled and their mission is righteous, just as they cannot turn back time and undo all the deaths they’re directly or indirectly responsible for.  And yet, this doesn’t mean that victory or inner peace aren’t impossible: it’s hard, and it’s painful, but with patience, hard work, and a willingness to make other people better it is possible. One can do great harm and still get a shot a decency.  Perfection or purity are not necessary: trying is.

So, the elections happened. The results were terrible, to the point where I’m actually currently somewhat grateful for the degree of separation that currently exists between Puerto Rico and the states.  I’m still processing, and in moments when I can process about the comparatively  trivial, I think, well, this is going to affect the shit out of my novel.

Context: Over the past month or so, I’ve actually gone back to working on Faerie, which over the years had become something I only occasionally talked about but never get any closer to completing, but has now become  some 30,000+ words long, i.e., about as long as an Animorphs book. And then Trump happened, which is making me reconsider the whole thing, again. Now, on top of not being sure if the story about two teenage Muslimahs dealing with their evolving feelings about their religion in a newly Islamophobic environment is a story I should be telling or can do justice to, I’m sort of kinda feeling like Trump and what he’s done need to be part of the  story. While this works, to a degree–it fits right in with the themes and plot–it also means rethinking large swaths of what I’ve already done, including the book’s overall tone, as well as several key characters and scenes. So I have questions, and no answers yet.

In any case, until those answers come, I decided to write for today’s 1,500 words a scene where my characters actually deal with the election. Right now it exists more or less as a way to process my own thoughts and put them on paper, and to try to get something positive out of the whole thing: I’m not sure if it will actually make it into the final work, although some version probably will, if the story is still set in 2016 by the time the second  draft begins.

I did not get to watch Donald Trump get declared President. I’d been tired, and by the time I’d gotten to sleep, there had been no indication yet of where things were going. Trump seemed to have an early lead, but that could have meant anything. And so, I said good night to my parents and to the friends mom had invited over, people she had met while volunteering for Hillary, and who now looked to celebrate the fruits of all they’d achieved. Like all of them, I expected to wake up tomorrow in a world where we had our first female president. It had been an incredibly crap year, but it would all be worth it.

As you know, this is not what happened.

I woke up to sobs—mom’s—coming from the direction of her room. It was all I needed to know that the worst had occurred. With dread increasing with every step I walked there, and found her sitting on their bed. Dad, whose face showed signs that he himself had been crying, sat beside her, grim, exhausted, and the most helpless I’d ever seen him. Both were still in yesterday’s clothes—had they even slept?

“Hillary conceded at [time]. She’s been like this since.” He filled me in on the details—how Trump got an early lead in Florida, which only got larger and more insurmountable, and how it then came to Pennsylvania, where mom had volunteered, in fact, doing canvassing and voter registration, and Michigan, and Wisconsin, all of which went the same way, with red filling an ever-growing, and utterly terrifying, number of counties. Hillary voters had come out in force, and in fact appeared to have met expectations, but Trump’s voters exceeded them, coming out in numbers people simply had not expected, all to vote in man who stood for nothing good, and whose only goal appeared to be to ruin the lives of people like me. What’s more, they’d done so despite the worst campaign in history, meaning they really believed in what he said. Worse still, dad explained, the Democrats had failed in their attempt to win the Senate, meaning that the Republicans had it all: they controlled the country, and could do whatever they wanted with it. It would be as if the last eight years—half my life—had never happened.

Dad asked me to stay with mom while he washed up and prayed. I sat down next to her, searching for words that wouldn’t feel inane or redundant or weren’t just plain lies. Sure, I could tell her that God would provide, and that we’d get through this, but she knew these things; what good would it do to just vomit them out?

“Remember when you came back from your first day of voter registration? How you’d told me you’d been sent to a grocery store owned by Ecuadorians, and how you stood there for hours trying to get people to just talk to you? You told me how frustrating it had been that most ignored you, but there were also people who would talk to you, and were surprised at how good your Spanish was, and would just make conversation… In the end, you said you’d gotten only three people registered, but you felt pumped about them all, and how it was super-exhausting but you couldn’t wait to do it again.

“And you did, over and over again, even when it turned into the absolute worst—the work was that important to you. And I just want to say, thank you. You’re my hero. And sure, it didn’t work out, in the end. But you’re still that person, and I love that you’re that person, and you should be damn proud of what you did.” I wasn’t sure these were the right words, and part of me wondered if maybe I should have said them back then in the first place, instead of keeping them to myself until it had all gone hopeless, but they seemed to have had some effect. She hugged me back, which was something, and we stayed like that until dad returned and told me it was time to prepare for school, if I wanted to go. That was new: usually, the only way I could get away with not going was if I were suffering from the plague.

School. Really, why couldn’t elections be on Fridays, or immediately before a holiday? That way we’d at least get some time to process. But no, I’d either have to go and face the assholes who would be just so smug that their garbage man won that they’d be no stopping them, or not go and show them how much they scared me. I decided to go with the first. So I washed, performed the most useless-feeling [morning prayers] of my life, and then got dressed.

“Are you sure you want to wear that?” Dad asked, once I’d come out of my room, referring to my hijab. Another new thing. “It might be safer not to, with everything that’s happened.”

I have to admit I had thought the same thing, as I’d wrapped it around my head. Invisibility had grown increasingly tempting as the semester had gone on—just how good would it be to just walk around and not worry about what people thought, and without having to make constant split-decision judgments about whether a glare belonged to someone who would just pass me by, or to someone who thought of me as something wrong with the world for him or her to “fix”. And it wouldn’t even be haram—we were supposed to be believers, not martyrs: not wearing a hijab for one’s safety might not be ideal, but it was acceptable.

At the same time, it was school. It’s not like the people there hadn’t seen me wear it every damn day of the year, or didn’t know precisely what I believed. Wearing my hijab might provoke assholes to do things they wouldn’t have done before, but it would definitively tell them that they’d gotten to me. Perhaps Pari was getting to me; hijab as resistance also had its appeal.

“Yeah, I am.” As badass speeches went, it was barely one. Still, saying it actually made me feel slightly better. “It’ll be fine.” How was I the one being reassuring today?

“Come over here and give me a hug,” dad asked. His embraces had never been terribly strong, but there was something about this one; as if it were the last one. “I’m so sorry we couldn’t give you the world you deserved.”

I drove to Pari’s place to pick her up. She opened the door, looking like death in clothes she appeared to have picked out at random, including a hijab which horribly clashed with everything, and which I just knew she hadn’t hesitated to put on. She’d spent the night with Alex and his dads, she explained, and as things went wrong they’d broken out the rum. The only reason she wasn’t currently trying to burn the world into a more useful ash form was that she got nauseous whenever she moved too quickly (Alex had eventually driven her home).  “How are you and the parents?” she asked.

“Apocalyptic. Your mom?”

“I don’t know,” she said, with no particular concern. “She left before I woke up. Left a note that just said ‘out’. It might be nothing, or it might be everything—I guess I’ll know later.” I could never get used to how she could just say things like that—it seemed unbelievable, how much had to have happened, to make her that numb, and if it truly helped.

We rode in silence to school. Pari had reclined her seat to try to keep her stomach settled, and held her eyes closed. I was too busy thinking the same things I’d been thinking on the way to her house, and while getting dressed, and during [morning prayer]. I’d always known people could hate, and had seen firsthand some of the forms that hate could take and what people drunk on it could do. Until today, though, I couldn’t understand just how much of it there could be, or the possibility that, in the end, the people who hated could outnumber the people who didn’t. And now they’d won, completely and utterly, to such a degree that I couldn’t even imagine a best-case scenario. Last few years had been flooded with news about queer people being killed, and violence against Muslims, and police killing people and mass shootings every month, and that had all been with Obama in charge. Just could it not get a hundred times worse under someone who stood for the opposite of what he believed in?

“It’s going to be bad, isn’t it?” Pari asked. Perhaps it was the hangover, but there didn’t seem to be a trace of excitement in her—Pari, who fought and argued because she loved fighting, and who wore a hijab not because she believed in it, but because it was a way to say “fuck you” to the haters. Somehow, it was the scariest thing I’d heard all morning.

So yeah, very much a quick, unedited, first draft, but it helped me, at least.

While the parallels between Nikita and Person of Interest are not as easy to identify as those between Nikita and Alias, they are in some ways arguably more substantive. Produced roughly during the same period, the two series’ takes on the espionage genre not only feature similar tones and (to a degree) aesthetics, but also similar themes and concerns. Their core foci may be different—Person of Interest is chiefly about how technology changes the world, both by making possible and normalizing the surveillance state and by altering the definition of living thing, while Nikita is about abuse and dehumanization, and the possibility of reclaiming that humanity—but both also deal with themes like identity, redemption, corruption, rebirth, and rebirth—more than enough, in other words, to make comparing and contrasting the series both interesting and rewarding—hence what I hope will become a series. This is Division of Interest, and we begin with the two couples (hush!) with whom it all begins.

(Series spoilers for both Person of Interest and Nikita below.)

(Content Notes: Suicide, suicidal ideation)

While both Person of Interest and Nikita will eventually possess the ensembles which television insists are truly necessary in order to effectively fight crime, the two series actually start out as the stories of two people against the world, and the bond between them. Immediately, similarities are apparent. Both pairs consist of a senior partner (Finch, Nikita), and a junior partner (Reese, Alex). Both partnerships begin after the senior partner rescues the junior when they are at their lowest—Reese has spent several months a homeless drunk when Finch finds him, while Nikita finds Alex when she, an addict with nowhere else to go, is living with her rapist drug dealer boyfriend Ronnie—and offering them an opportunity. In both cases, the senior partner is indirectly responsible for the junior’s misfortune: Nikita killed Alex’s father and then left her with the person who sold her into sex slavery, while Finch is directly and indirectly responsible for the course of events that led the U.S. government to attempt to kill Reese and destroy his life as he knows it.

There are, of course, a few obvious differences. Nikita trains Alex and acts as a mentor / mother figure, while Finch seeks out Reese for the expertise he already possesses, so that he may serve as his employee. In Person of Interest, Finch starts out as the person in the office, while Reese is the person on the field, which is an inversion of Nikita’s set-up, where Nikita is the one doing the fighting, while Alex is  the one gathering intel and providing support (one can, if one were so inclined, argue that Alex is actually a counterpart for the Machine, at least at first). In both series, the division between roles eventually blur—particularly when it comes to who saved whom—but to a much larger degree in Nikita—not surprising, given that Nikita and Alex, as mirror images, share a jack-of-all-trades skill set, where Finch and Reese, puzzle pieces, complement each other’s specialties.

A more substantive difference lies in the way both partnerships change as the series goes along. While Person of Interest has little interest in creating lasting friction between Finch and Reese or in breaking the two up, the changing dynamics between Nikita and Alex are a key source of tension in their show, which features more than one extended period in which the two are simply not talking to one another. Part of it is, again, due to their respective skill sets, which allow Nikita and Alex to drive plots separately in a way Finch and Reese cannot, but also perhaps owes something to the way both relationships progress. While Nikita starts out with Nikita and Alex already sharing a bond and being willing to risk their lives for each other, Reese spends the entire first season knowing that he is being kept in the dark by Finch, and not-secretly attempting to undermine his employer’s attempts to continue doing so. When Reese discovers what Finch has been keeping, it’s not really a surprise the way Nikita’s secrets are, because Finch being a closed book was baked into their relationship’s cake.  Finally, storytelling structure plays a role here: while both series have procedural elements, Person of Interest is exponentially more attached to that structure than Nikita, making it far more reliant on having a consistent dynamic at its center.  Nikita, meanwhile, with no real understanding of what a status quo is, can afford to freestyle.

Ghost exorcists

Both Person of Interest and Nikita are fundamentally about ghosts, about people who remain here on this earth even after their lives are over. Nikita has officially been executed by the state, in accordance with the terms of her sentence. Reese was declared dead and disavowed by the C.I.A. Alex has died twice over, the first as modern-day Anastasia Alexandra Udinov, and the second as Alex, who committed suicide while in prison. Whoever Finch originally was still technically exists, but he’s long since abandoned that life in favor of others; his other chief identity, the one he once intended to use for the rest of his life, died in the attack that took his best friend’s life.

Nikita and Finch, in particular, remain on this Earth due to past mistakes. Finch, in addition to the act of sedition which initially made him a fugitive, is also haunted by his decision to create the Machine and hand it over to the government, and by his role in his best friend Nathan’s death. Having seen what the wrong people could do with power, he has crafted a code for himself and his creation, which determines his approach to everything.  Nikita, meanwhile, deals with the ghost caused by a lifetime of abuse, and most notably the abuse she suffered during her time in Division, which blackened her soul under the guise of love and redemption. Both, then, seek to exorcise these ghosts by doing good, Nikita by destroying her abusers with the skills they imparted upon her and preventing them from ever being able to abuse again, and Finch by taking on Nathan’s mission.

Given these similarities, it is not surprising, then, that both of the characters’ final stories are the same, as circumstances lead them both to release release of the parts of themselves they’d been keeping locked up, nor is it surprising that their final rewards are the opportunity to return to the lives that they’d lost, Nikita being able to become Nikita Mears on her own terms, and Finch, more abstractly, being able to return to the life he’d abandoned after Nathan’s death. If there is a key difference, it is in execution: where we see exactly what Nikita’s ghosts are, what her darker self is capable of—killing, torture, indiscriminate destruction—and how it existed before Division, Harold’s dark side remains much more theoretical.  Perhaps due to the strands of super-hero narrative in its DNA, Person of Interest is less willing to truly commit to a Harold who does terrible things: his “dark” self, in the end, is pretty much him on a normal day, and while the series has him unleash a global catastrophe as a sign that he’s changed, the series can never quite sell it, perhaps the main flaw in what is otherwise a fantastic finale.

Digging deeper, it’s worth noting how both characters’ experiences have shaped them in ways that have led them to favor opposite approaches. Finch’s self-imposed quest is in key ways a compromise, something he came up with after having taken stock of his limits. His crusade is not an attempt to save the world or to undo his past mistakes or have it all; he’s saving people one at a time because that is what he can do. By the time the series begins, he has abandoned his identity again and keeps his fiancée at arms’ length; after Samaritan comes into power, he remakes himself again, because he has no illusions about being able to do anything else. Nikita, meanwhile, thinks big: she doesn’t want to chip away at Division and weaken it; she wants to cut off its head. And while she’s not inflexible—she stops sabotaging active Division missions as soon as she loses her people on the inside, for example—her belief that she can complete her mission never really wavers.  As she narrates in the intro, the last world the enemies will breathe before the end will be her name, and by god, that’s what she makes happen.

And yet, despite these differing biases, the two characters share a preference for being in control. Within the barriers he’s erected around himself, Finch insists on setting the terms of the job in accordance to what he believes is correct. Reese and his predecessor Dillinger both know only what he wants them to know.  The Machine, despite being an intelligence with her own will, has the limits he has set. Finch’s story is in many way the story about how he comes to accept that he can’t control there world. Nikita, to use a loaded term, is bossy. She will tell people what to do because she’s the best there is at what she does and that’s the way things are. Again, she’s not inflexible, but over and over again, she insists in having the last word. If Finch is stone, seeking to be unmovable, Nikita is the flood, carrying everyone in her wake.

You want to invade the moon, and I will find the next rocket ship 

I mentioned earlier that both partnerships begin with the junior partners being rescued at their lowest points, and it is that rescue which informs the two couples’ dynamics, and most notably, the way they lead the junior partners to sublimate death wishes into almost fanatical devotion to their saviors.

If there is one thing which defines Reese, it is his death wish. His time as a homeless man was nothing more than an attempt to die the slow way. In the simulation seen in “.exe”, we learn that in a world where the Machine didn’t exist and he never met Finch, he committed suicide after his relationship with his love Jessica collapsed. Even after meeting Finch and becoming invested in his work with the numbers, his suicidal ideation remains: he’s willing to die for his revenge after Carter’s death and that he’s able to die so that Finch may live, is, despite everything, a happy ending for the character.

And yet, Reese also lives for Finch. It’s worth remembering that Harold’s initial terms are, by most accounts, unworkably unreasonable: Dillinger may have been an ass, but he wasn’t wrong to be frustrated. And while Reese doesn’t acquiesce to them without question—he gets Finch to tell him about the Machine soon enough, and not long after gets him to agree with employing others—he agrees with them when almost nobody else would have, initially because he has nothing better to do—he can always commit suicide later—but eventually because of Finch himself. Despite his initial suspicions, Reese’s dedication towards the numbers eventually transfers over to his employer, to the point where, after Finch is kidnapped, he threatens the Machine in order to get him back. Even the successive revelations about his employer, no matter how unflattering, are enough for Reese’s commitment to waver. More importantly, he cares. His concern is expressed in muted and very male ways (more on this later), but it is unmistakable and very real.

Alex, while less consistently so—again, there are extended moments in which she and Nikita are at odds, and these tend to coincide with moments where she has her own independent goals, i.e., something to live for—is equally devoted to Nikita: it is she who suggests going undercover inside Division, and that her relapse into addiction occurs after she is injured and forced to consider the prospect of not aiding Nikita. After all, she has no sense of self: after retaking Zetrov, avenging her father, and rescuing her mother, what else is left for her? Like Reese, she also deals with a death wish—one leading to an actual suicide attempt—borne out of a combination of loss and survivor’s guilt. Somewhat ironically, the thing that destroys Reese, his time in black ops—is what allows Alex to be saved.

It is here where we get one of the major points of divergence between the two series. Despite all the crap in Alex’s life, Nikita is a series that allows Alex to choose living and to make something for herself that exists beyond Nikita —not only does she end having chosen a career as an anti-human trafficking activist, she also asserts that she is, above everything, a survivor. Where once she would consider this her curse, she ends the series having figured out that it is her blessing. Even then, however, she remains devoted to Nikita, risking everything to clear her mentor’s name; if asked to, she would have helped Nikita burn down the world. Reese never really gets there. He tries—see Campbell, Iris, as well as his at-arms-length relationships with Carter, Fusco, and Shaw—but attempts to do so are half-hearted at best, and never really take; in the end, if he changes in some way, it’s because he comes to see satisfaction in a good death rather than ambivalence. It’s not unimportant—just the opposite—but it does, in a key way, prove his mentor Kara Stanton right: he walks in the dark.

Gender and emotion

In the end, it’s almost impossible not to read Reese’s relationship with Finch, and Nikita’s relationship with Alex, as love stories. Not romances—we can blame heteronormativity for that—but stories of people who love each other truly and deeply, and what makes them interesting when placed against each other is the different forms that these two stories take, and how gendered those differences are. Nikita and Alex’s relationship, when they’re not placing bullets in each other’s non-essential areas (not a euphemism) is very affectionate—lots of hugging, lots of talking, lots of processing. They know exactly how they feel about each other, because they’ve told each other exactly how important they are to each other. Reese and Finch, meanwhile, express their affection in much more oblique ways, never verbalizing it unless they need to, and preferring gestures, like bringing tea and trying to undermine the other’s efforts to sacrifice himself. Their personalities —Finch, which his paranoia, Reese with his reticence—don’t allow them to do things like, say, tell each other how they are dealing with trauma in an attempt to process. It’s notable that Finch’s prescription for a drunken, about-to-go-commit-suicide Reese is to put him to work immediately.

This isn’t to say either approach is better: as executed, I am very much into both relationships, even as I note that the one which involved hugs and talking about feelings  is the one where both people went on to embrace living. I do wonder, however, how the shows have read if the approaches had been switched. Would Alex and Nikita’s relationship (and, in more broad terms, Nikita’s relationship with everybody else) had been as compelling and worth-rooting-for if they had both treated each other with Reese and Finch’s distance, or would they have read as inauthentic or even abusive, given their age differences and contexts?  Would the stories of Very Private Person Finch and have worked if he’d also been someone who easily formed an affectionate bond with an emotional, needy Reese, or would have it read as paradoxical, even oxymoronic? That their counterparts exist and tell their stories very well suggests that it would have been possible, and yet…

In any case, we got what we got, and what we got was great. While both series would eventually expand their scopes and introduce other equally rewarding relationships and dynamics, neither forgot how they began, and each series’ final episode pares things down to the original partnership, two people not against the world, but for it.