ladyvyola | (no subject)

And while I'm still cranky about Luther....

We start in media res with Luther essentially torturing a suspect for information. Congratulations. If the past decade has taught us anything, it's that anyone can torture. There's no super-duper exceptional detective skills going on here.

After he realizes that Alice murdered her parents, he does nothing. He doesn't put her under surveillance, he doesn't question anyone in her or her parents' lives to see if anyone ever noticed friction or resentment. He just keeps confronting her. And he seems far more intent on making her acknowledge just how smart he is despite going on and on about how she is the one who wants that recognition.

And his little stunt with the gun and the flame in his boss's office? He reads as dangerously manic, either unwilling to stop when she says to because he must have absolute control of what happens and when or unable to stop because he cannot control himself.

Why am I supposed to buy that this guy is a good man, an effective policeman, an admirable person in any way?

Also, I don't accept a word of the scene where he calls Alice and insists that love exists. That was never her argument. She was saying that what he labeled as love for Zoe was a perversion of everything love is supposed to be. As far as I'm concerned, his explicit actions support Alice's stance.

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I am not saying that you should, in any way, shape or form, like the show, or that you should change your opinion of it at all but I think your base assumption here: a good man, an effective policeman, an admirable person in any way? is flawed.

Luther isn't any of those things and I never got the impression from the show that you're supposed to think that he's any of those things. He's a protagonist, but he's not a hero.

(Warning: this comes off hostile but it's bleed-through from the show, not you. A lot of my hostility is because I'd heard so much good about this show, not just on-line but from people who know me in RL and what I like and I bounced off this ep so hard that I'm still falling.)

Well, he needs to be at least one of those things for me to care about him and spend hours of my time watching him.

I've loved protagonist anti-heroes in books and tv before -- Dexter and Hannibal come to mind. At least they're competent.

I just need somewhere to start with Luther and there's nothing there. He's coded all over ~!man-pain!~ and all I'm getting is TOXIC.

I'm going off the reams of meta that people I generally agree with have written, that Luther is flawed, that this is what Batman would be like if he were real, that he suffers so damn much in order to stare into the abyss.

He can fall into it for all the first episode made me care.

Yeah, like I said...I don't expect your feelings to change because it's clear from what you're saying that you need those qualities (or one of them) to possibly cotton on to a show. I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment that this is NOT the show for you. It's not. And whoever recced it to you made a serious error in judgement.

My only thing is that when you're asking those questions, where are these qualities...they're not there. Those qualities just aren't part of the show.

He is definitely not your traditional tv protagonist. This man is flawed in so many ways it's painful. But also kind of beautiful. There is good in him, and he is competent, but not in any traditional way, and it comes out in ways that are hard to see, sometimes.

I found it a hard show to watch, but ultimately rewarding. But I definitely see that it's not for everyone - it was barely for me.