I don't get Merlin.

[kaigou]

I keep hearing about it (good and now a lot of bad) and figured I'd see what the fuss was about... and I can see there's fussing but I'm not seeing a lot of about. Morgana is a stereotype, badly written, and not very well played, either. Uther has some variation in him but that, I suspect, is because Tony Head is a damn fine actor stuck doing an Obi-Wan -- that is, if not making gold from lead, at least making the lead passable. Merlin might have potential, as does the actress playing Gwen, if not for the TSTL moments from early on, and we won't even go into the fact that for a moment I was delighted by the cheerfully anchronistic multicultural cast, until I realized it's only multicultural to the extent that non-white equals working class or servant, while white means being anything from lowest to highest.

Gaius drove me bonkers from the get-go; he's such a freaking stock-character (and played like one) that it's not even amusing, and I'd probably hurt someone if I had to watch an entire season of faux-science-doctor man-of-all-trades (who gets the books out at the drop of a hat) because I've seen the librarian stunt pulled before, and it worked on BtVS (with a better librarian, I might add) but it just didn't jive, here. Gwen's dad is the amiable friendly big black man when he had justifiable reason to be mightily righteous angry black man, and is it just me when I notice that the bad-guys were (a) women and (b) beautiful and (c) dark-haired and pale-skinned? Could we have some variety in our big bads, please? I might've stuck it out if Eve Myles were kept around for more than two episodes, or better yet, if she'd been cast as Morgana and let that Morgana-chick get shrill and strident on some other series.

And don't even get me started about Arthur. I don't mind going with the character development, but there's got to be some kind of redeeming value in him somewhere, and frankly, I didn't seen an iota of it. I was left with the conclusion that (a) we're supposed put up with this because hey, the legend-Arthur was a good guy, so this Arthur must also be a good guy, and that (b) in the meantime, we enjoy the fact that he's good-looking. Except he's not; if he has model good-looks then it's the model for your local Kmarts' weekly circulars, not model-good-looks for anything better known, and besides that, why is it that his looks are supposed to make up for the fact that he's a freaking asshole?

So, nope. Not wasting any more time on that one, and from the critiques I'm seeing around the net on S2, I suspect I'm not really missing anything.

Comments

[wilhelminabenedict]

Katie McGrath...is Morgana? Is there another actress you're thinking of?

[kaigou]

Nope, she was the bad singer in the first two episodes, and played... uhm... what was the name. Gwen, right, on Torchwood. At least, I'm pretty sure that's the actress' name. I figured if she was in there, she's shown she's got chops and could make something of it, but then she was gone inside of two episodes. Damn it.

[wilhelminabenedict]

No, Eve Myles played Lady Helen--just looked it up--and Katie McGrath is Morgana.

[kaigou]

DOH. Okay. Will edit! I had it backwards then. Whoops.

[annotated_em]

This. So much of this.

I really, really don't see the appeal of Merlin. I watched an episode and it drove me to frothing fits over the blatant stupidities. (OH HAI I am a magician and I just saw a magician get himself killed, let me show you my magic, stranger!)

[kaigou]

I can deal with stupid. It's the too-stupid that makes me roll my eyes and wonder if I'm really that bored with that much time on my hands to be wasting on this, and then I reminded myself: as an atheist, life is too freaking short, and I'm not going to waste any of it watching tripe.

[ivoryandhorn]

Merlin's one of those fandoms where the fic vastly out-strips the canon in quality

[kaigou]

So basically it's BBC's Weiss Kruez. Gotcha.

[branchandroot]

Bingo.

[sevenall]

Merlin is like fanfic on tv, isn't it? It references the well-known myth (though it's more like winking to the audience than referencing) while being sloppily AU. I also think it aired at a time when a lot of fandom were looking for somewhere to go after SGA, but it didn't have the wide appeal SGA did.

Considering the level of effort that seemingly goes into plot and dialogue, I'm not surprised at the way racial and sexist issues are handled.

[kaigou]

Considering the level of effort that seemingly goes into plot and dialogue, I'm not surprised at the way racial and sexist issues are handled.

Must be a level of effort going into some other plot and dialogue, because I didn't see a single example of worthwhile exchange or conflict development in any of the first five episodes. The only exception to that was not due to plot or dialogue, but quite frankly to Tony Head's ability to make even bad dialogue adequate by virtue of a fine-tuned delivery. When I think of the dialogue in and of itself, my impression was that it was some pretty wooden stuff -- and few of the cast (if any, excepting Head and Myles) had the ability to draw out the dialogue into something less wooden. For that matter, Gwen's dialogue was the only one with a truly distinctive voice, and that was only because they had her repeating the same pattern, of left-handed complimenting and then backtracking on her words while humorously making it worse.

Gwen's wasn't top-notch dialogue, however, because it relied on a speaking pattern that doesn't translate into other situations -- that is, at other times, she wouldn't display that pattern and thus her dialogue was no longer distinctive. And then sometimes the script had her using that pattern at an inappropriate point, because her voice only had this one note and it was play that note or use a flat voice.

Then again, it could be that I'm excessively hard on my-own-language dialogue b/c I came to fandom by way of BtVS, and that level of dialogue-sharpness is rivaled by few (although come to think of it, M*A*S*H might be one of the few). I give a lot more leeway when it's a translated work, because I can rarely tell if any flaws are embedded in the original language or are the result of a mediocre translator.

But still, no, wasn't impressed on plot or dialogue accounts, so I guess your statement remains true: yes, the sexist and racist elements are much worse. And I'm not even sure I'd be willing to forgive those, even if the plot and dialogue were Whedon-level sharp.

[sevenall]

Er, I meant that since they can't even do clever plot or dialogue in Merlin, I'm not at all surprised they can't get other things right either. Could be lack of effort or lack of cleverness or both.

I agree with your analysis; also that both Buffy and M*A*S*H had great dialogue and would like to add that S1 and S2 of West Wing had its moment.