Robin Hood rewatch continues
Oct. 26th, 2016 11:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jedi_of_urthSo like I said, I’ve been doing a concentrated Robin Hood rewatch, and I might as well post the thoughts I’ve had as I go.
Robin Hood 1x02
Hey, they fixed the establishing thwacky arrow, good to see that back.
You know, I think that episode was a lot better than I remember it being, and I’m reminded of just how much I was prepared to like Robin early on.
Early Robin is a flawed hero certainly, but he had the makings of a good character. He was a man who wanted to be a hero but it didn’t come naturally, who reacts with his heart first and head a ways down the list, and who doesn’t really know if he’s doing the overall right thing, but it feels like the right thing to him. Even the not killing thing seems very much to be his thought that that’s what heroes (especially ones that are also atoners) should do rather than given any practical thought.
While I still don’t see the present appeal between Robin and Marian, their complicated past is partly representative of how he doesn’t always make the right choices and he can’t just make things right by just coming home.
Plus Vasey isn’t that far off (though that I’m less sure the writers did it consciously), that Robin is at heart a lawful character, he just believes in a lawful good world while Vasey is lawful evil; chaotic good is not really who Robin is just the hat he currently wears. Robin serves Richard with the fanatical devotion that...well Guy serves Vasey with for quite a while; and Robin does it because he sees Richard as the good and true ruler just because he is the rightful one, which will become one of my long running issues with Robin that he doesn’t see how much Richard contributes to everything Robin’s fighting against at home.
There isn’t much in the way of Guy to comment on this time, he’s just sort of skulking around (he’s not even brooding). His interactions with Marian are so much less awkward than they’re going to be down the road too when he morphs into a teenager who doesn’t know how to ask out the girl he likes rather than the more sexually predatory version nodded towards here (that version never quite goes away exactly, but it becomes less dominant within a few episodes).
Although again, trying to press the flashback episode into this...yeah, Locksley is Gisborne basically. And why doesn’t he ever change the name? It’s obvious why it would be done out of character to always remind us as viewers that it’s supposed to be Robin’s lands, but why wouldn’t Guy’s pride demand the name change?
This episode was better for my Robin/Much shipping heart, or maybe I was just in a mood that saw it that way again when I wasn’t for the pilot.
This episode makes a big deal about John, but I have never had strong feelings for John (well...later on he gets a little brainwashed to the cult of Robin, which I do not like). Like so many things in these earliest episodes they seemed to be have an eye on giving the characters a few more layers, so many of which will fall by the wayside as the series goes on.
But the age old question remains, where did all the other outlaws go? Did Robin get a lot of people killed off screen between episodes?
Robin Hood 1x03
So thwacky arrow of establishing is gone again, it’s comically cheesy when it’s there and even sillier when it’s not.
I don’t know if I like this episode or not, but it gives me a lot of thoughts. First off Guard Joe is handled terribly as it’s super obvious all along who the initial killer is going to be. Second, this has to go on my list of things to pay attention to if I ever actually get to later parts of Final Testament as it slips in several things about the course of things in Nottingham over the years (actually on that note, I forgot to note in the last episode, that John had to be exiled when Robin was still in Locksley, because while I’m not good at guessing ages, Little John is too old to be under 5-6 when Robin left – I think we later get that confirmed too; so John being a criminal and outlaw must have happened on Robin and Edward’s watch).
This episode was always very influential on Final Testament, though only for Guy and Vasey, but having that verse still in my head makes this really uncomfortable, because I know what I think was going on here. That this is how Guy became Vasey’s lieutenant and this isn’t the first time Guy has felt Vasey’s going to turn around and off him when he becomes unsatisfying; so far he’s either been chosen to survive or managed to defend himself in the end and Vasey claims he always knew that would be the end result; so here Guy knows he’s looking at someone who could take his place and if he’s replaced he’s dead. So in the end when he kills...master at arms guy, he isn’t quite sure Vasey’s game isn’t still going on, but he did in fact win/survive this round.
As for my Robin check in...I’m a little divided on this. Much’s last line is presented with a bit too much triumph (actually the whole last scene, but we’ll get to that) for me to give them credit for seeing that this is still a flaw of Robin’s, although most of the episode it’s presented as if it is. Not necessarily a flaw he needs to overcome, but one he needs to understand is a flaw and be able to temper in himself. Marian is right, he’s in it for the glory, it’s just small scale glory that’s being loved and revered by the common people rather than honored by kings now.
There is also a really interesting moment that if I was going to right serious Robin fic I would want to examine. Because, being hunted he turns back into a soldier, prepared to fight and likely kill because that’s the only way he can see out of it. I am still recalling that I didn’t really dislike Robin so much for most of season 1; I didn’t like him around Marian so as more of his scenes involved her the less I saw worthwhile in him. But I’m not sure my big issues with Robin as a whole start until s2, but we’ll keep an eye on that hence the Robin check.
As for Marian, well the problem is she’s caught up in the plot of the episode and the plot of the episode is not very good. Though episode does involve the first real instance of the Guy/Marian we’ll see more of down the road. It’s not quite there, but it’s kind of there; and while doing show events is even more in my wildest dreams for FT, I think exploring this from Guy’s POV, she seems to be on his side in his conflict with master at arms dude.
Okay, I have to talk about the end...how do any of these people forgive Robin? Does the Sheriff make a speech about how Guard Joe actually killed all those people? Because all they could have seen was Guard Joe (who seems like he’s probably well enough liked) tumble out the trees with arrows in him to get stabbed by Guy; maybe folks heard him say he shot the Sheriff but would people really decide that meant he had killed all the dead people? Obviously either he or Robin is still taking the fall for Vasey’s victims as no one else is going to; and it’s not as if it wouldn’t serve Vasey for people to go right on blaming Robin. If nothing else, even if plenty of people heard Gaurd Joe shot the Sheriff and connected that with the kid’s death earlier, Robin’s surely still on the hook of Joderik’s (or Jo-derik as Vasey would say) death. Or, if Nottingham is really as against the Sheriff as they must be to support Robin in the first place, how many of them would be completely happy if they did know Robin just saved Vasey’s life?
Nottingham peasants really are the worst, I seem to recall that being an ongoing thing.
Robin Hood 1x04
Quick check, thwacky arrow back, Robin not horrible but spends a lot of the episode around Marian so kind of hard for me to deal with (plus John seems to have already started converting to Robin worship so that’s a problem).
Also, may need to start a Much abuse check, because it’s a thing and this episode was particularly bad. Just because he happened to be wrong about the horse being tracked doesn’t mean he had the wrong idea that they might be in danger. I don’t think he ever thought he was accusing Roy of intentionally leading the Sheriff or Guy’s men to them, he was just thinking ‘holy hell what if we’re still in danger?’
One question though, how long has it been since the pilot? I would think Marian’s joking when she asks if the baby is Robin’s but I sort of feel like it’s not out of the range of possibility that it’s been 8-9 months since he came back. It would better justify why the team seems to have gotten so much closer (even John’s conversion to Robin-tology and why the master at arms dude came out of nowhere last episode), and it would give a clear idea of what when Seth was likely conceived.
But we all know what I feel the most need to talk about this episode, and it’s not Roy. I’d never realized before, but in the episode that’s the single hardest to deal with as a Guy fan, Guy has like four lines and most of them aren’t even full lines. As far as I recall, the show never even brings this up again, which has always signaled to me that they never had a way to resolve what was set up here with the Guy character we’re going to be seeing more of from now on. I never actually decided how to handle the Annie and Seth story for Final Testament, I’ve had several ideas but as I’m a very long way from writing them I haven’t ever committed.
Let’s lay the problems out there. We never hear any other times when Guy was fooling around with the servant girls; I’m not saying he wouldn’t exactly and he maybe stopped after what happened with Annie, maybe his Marian blinders are a recent thing, maybe he was drunk and happened to fall into bed with Annie (often one of my top options). But we are going to watch him for the better part of two seasons not really know how to talk to a girl he likes.
Also, even within this episode Annie feels a little delusional about their relationship. If she had position he’d marry her? Well maybe, in that he would like to marry a woman with position, but not in the sense she seems to be talking from of ‘he loves me but we can’t be together because of position.’ And I really don’t see Guy giving her that impression, if he gave it at all it was in the case of the position being important in enticing him to marriage rather than it being the block in them doing so. Plus, she’s talking about it with a random guy in the dungeon, I feel like Guy would absolutely have insisted on secrecy being part of their arrangement so her actions here make me all the more suspicious of her behavior.
So first I have to answer what kind of relationship Guy and Annie actually had and whether Seth even is Guy’s son or at least what he thinks on the subject. I’ve never really doubted that Guy at least thinks Seth could be his son, he’s not 100% sure (owing to my opinion that their relationship was likely mostly a few drunken half-remembered hookups and he can’t be sure she’s not also with other men in that time) but he’s willing to be like ‘fine I’ll send the kid to the abbey after it’s born.’
Which leaves us with the big concern, how the baby ended up in the woods. I can’t tell if the episode is meant to be implying that Guy had been out dumping the baby when he shows up at the beginning, but it certainly isn’t made clear even which direction he was coming from so I don’t feel like we have to assume that’s the case since it’s so hard to jell with other aspects of Guy’s character. So did he have someone else take the kid and they dumped it? It’s not like Guy knows or employs the most trustworthy of people. Did that people take the money and run or did something happen to them on the way (possibly falling into Locksley Canyon in one of its random appearances)? How long was the baby out in the woods anyway? (And how much brain damage did Robin do having it barely secured while riding on horseback?)
Does he want the kid, probably not; does he particularly care about the kid, probably not; but I don’t see why he wouldn’t be willing to send the kid to the abbey (if only the Locksley orphanage existed at this point; though by that logic if the Locksley canyon existed currently they could have dumped the baby down there). Annie says it isn’t cheap, and Guy at this point in his life (after Vasey’s had years to mold him and before Marian really starts to get under his skin) is almost certainly capable of killing a child/allowing it to die with good reason, but just existing and making his life a tiny bit more complicated (at the abbey it will be out of sight out of mind, just like Izzy) doesn’t seem like enough for his own child.
Maybe that’s why Guy doesn’t have many lines this episode. Anything he did say would come off like a terrible excuse of what he’s supposed to have done in the moment, but it also meant the writers didn’t commit to anything about his behavior or motivations about it. Which was convenient when they decided this wasn’t really the Guy they wanted for the rest of the show.
Robin Hood 1x02
Hey, they fixed the establishing thwacky arrow, good to see that back.
You know, I think that episode was a lot better than I remember it being, and I’m reminded of just how much I was prepared to like Robin early on.
Early Robin is a flawed hero certainly, but he had the makings of a good character. He was a man who wanted to be a hero but it didn’t come naturally, who reacts with his heart first and head a ways down the list, and who doesn’t really know if he’s doing the overall right thing, but it feels like the right thing to him. Even the not killing thing seems very much to be his thought that that’s what heroes (especially ones that are also atoners) should do rather than given any practical thought.
While I still don’t see the present appeal between Robin and Marian, their complicated past is partly representative of how he doesn’t always make the right choices and he can’t just make things right by just coming home.
Plus Vasey isn’t that far off (though that I’m less sure the writers did it consciously), that Robin is at heart a lawful character, he just believes in a lawful good world while Vasey is lawful evil; chaotic good is not really who Robin is just the hat he currently wears. Robin serves Richard with the fanatical devotion that...well Guy serves Vasey with for quite a while; and Robin does it because he sees Richard as the good and true ruler just because he is the rightful one, which will become one of my long running issues with Robin that he doesn’t see how much Richard contributes to everything Robin’s fighting against at home.
There isn’t much in the way of Guy to comment on this time, he’s just sort of skulking around (he’s not even brooding). His interactions with Marian are so much less awkward than they’re going to be down the road too when he morphs into a teenager who doesn’t know how to ask out the girl he likes rather than the more sexually predatory version nodded towards here (that version never quite goes away exactly, but it becomes less dominant within a few episodes).
Although again, trying to press the flashback episode into this...yeah, Locksley is Gisborne basically. And why doesn’t he ever change the name? It’s obvious why it would be done out of character to always remind us as viewers that it’s supposed to be Robin’s lands, but why wouldn’t Guy’s pride demand the name change?
This episode was better for my Robin/Much shipping heart, or maybe I was just in a mood that saw it that way again when I wasn’t for the pilot.
This episode makes a big deal about John, but I have never had strong feelings for John (well...later on he gets a little brainwashed to the cult of Robin, which I do not like). Like so many things in these earliest episodes they seemed to be have an eye on giving the characters a few more layers, so many of which will fall by the wayside as the series goes on.
But the age old question remains, where did all the other outlaws go? Did Robin get a lot of people killed off screen between episodes?
Robin Hood 1x03
So thwacky arrow of establishing is gone again, it’s comically cheesy when it’s there and even sillier when it’s not.
I don’t know if I like this episode or not, but it gives me a lot of thoughts. First off Guard Joe is handled terribly as it’s super obvious all along who the initial killer is going to be. Second, this has to go on my list of things to pay attention to if I ever actually get to later parts of Final Testament as it slips in several things about the course of things in Nottingham over the years (actually on that note, I forgot to note in the last episode, that John had to be exiled when Robin was still in Locksley, because while I’m not good at guessing ages, Little John is too old to be under 5-6 when Robin left – I think we later get that confirmed too; so John being a criminal and outlaw must have happened on Robin and Edward’s watch).
This episode was always very influential on Final Testament, though only for Guy and Vasey, but having that verse still in my head makes this really uncomfortable, because I know what I think was going on here. That this is how Guy became Vasey’s lieutenant and this isn’t the first time Guy has felt Vasey’s going to turn around and off him when he becomes unsatisfying; so far he’s either been chosen to survive or managed to defend himself in the end and Vasey claims he always knew that would be the end result; so here Guy knows he’s looking at someone who could take his place and if he’s replaced he’s dead. So in the end when he kills...master at arms guy, he isn’t quite sure Vasey’s game isn’t still going on, but he did in fact win/survive this round.
As for my Robin check in...I’m a little divided on this. Much’s last line is presented with a bit too much triumph (actually the whole last scene, but we’ll get to that) for me to give them credit for seeing that this is still a flaw of Robin’s, although most of the episode it’s presented as if it is. Not necessarily a flaw he needs to overcome, but one he needs to understand is a flaw and be able to temper in himself. Marian is right, he’s in it for the glory, it’s just small scale glory that’s being loved and revered by the common people rather than honored by kings now.
There is also a really interesting moment that if I was going to right serious Robin fic I would want to examine. Because, being hunted he turns back into a soldier, prepared to fight and likely kill because that’s the only way he can see out of it. I am still recalling that I didn’t really dislike Robin so much for most of season 1; I didn’t like him around Marian so as more of his scenes involved her the less I saw worthwhile in him. But I’m not sure my big issues with Robin as a whole start until s2, but we’ll keep an eye on that hence the Robin check.
As for Marian, well the problem is she’s caught up in the plot of the episode and the plot of the episode is not very good. Though episode does involve the first real instance of the Guy/Marian we’ll see more of down the road. It’s not quite there, but it’s kind of there; and while doing show events is even more in my wildest dreams for FT, I think exploring this from Guy’s POV, she seems to be on his side in his conflict with master at arms dude.
Okay, I have to talk about the end...how do any of these people forgive Robin? Does the Sheriff make a speech about how Guard Joe actually killed all those people? Because all they could have seen was Guard Joe (who seems like he’s probably well enough liked) tumble out the trees with arrows in him to get stabbed by Guy; maybe folks heard him say he shot the Sheriff but would people really decide that meant he had killed all the dead people? Obviously either he or Robin is still taking the fall for Vasey’s victims as no one else is going to; and it’s not as if it wouldn’t serve Vasey for people to go right on blaming Robin. If nothing else, even if plenty of people heard Gaurd Joe shot the Sheriff and connected that with the kid’s death earlier, Robin’s surely still on the hook of Joderik’s (or Jo-derik as Vasey would say) death. Or, if Nottingham is really as against the Sheriff as they must be to support Robin in the first place, how many of them would be completely happy if they did know Robin just saved Vasey’s life?
Nottingham peasants really are the worst, I seem to recall that being an ongoing thing.
Robin Hood 1x04
Quick check, thwacky arrow back, Robin not horrible but spends a lot of the episode around Marian so kind of hard for me to deal with (plus John seems to have already started converting to Robin worship so that’s a problem).
Also, may need to start a Much abuse check, because it’s a thing and this episode was particularly bad. Just because he happened to be wrong about the horse being tracked doesn’t mean he had the wrong idea that they might be in danger. I don’t think he ever thought he was accusing Roy of intentionally leading the Sheriff or Guy’s men to them, he was just thinking ‘holy hell what if we’re still in danger?’
One question though, how long has it been since the pilot? I would think Marian’s joking when she asks if the baby is Robin’s but I sort of feel like it’s not out of the range of possibility that it’s been 8-9 months since he came back. It would better justify why the team seems to have gotten so much closer (even John’s conversion to Robin-tology and why the master at arms dude came out of nowhere last episode), and it would give a clear idea of what when Seth was likely conceived.
But we all know what I feel the most need to talk about this episode, and it’s not Roy. I’d never realized before, but in the episode that’s the single hardest to deal with as a Guy fan, Guy has like four lines and most of them aren’t even full lines. As far as I recall, the show never even brings this up again, which has always signaled to me that they never had a way to resolve what was set up here with the Guy character we’re going to be seeing more of from now on. I never actually decided how to handle the Annie and Seth story for Final Testament, I’ve had several ideas but as I’m a very long way from writing them I haven’t ever committed.
Let’s lay the problems out there. We never hear any other times when Guy was fooling around with the servant girls; I’m not saying he wouldn’t exactly and he maybe stopped after what happened with Annie, maybe his Marian blinders are a recent thing, maybe he was drunk and happened to fall into bed with Annie (often one of my top options). But we are going to watch him for the better part of two seasons not really know how to talk to a girl he likes.
Also, even within this episode Annie feels a little delusional about their relationship. If she had position he’d marry her? Well maybe, in that he would like to marry a woman with position, but not in the sense she seems to be talking from of ‘he loves me but we can’t be together because of position.’ And I really don’t see Guy giving her that impression, if he gave it at all it was in the case of the position being important in enticing him to marriage rather than it being the block in them doing so. Plus, she’s talking about it with a random guy in the dungeon, I feel like Guy would absolutely have insisted on secrecy being part of their arrangement so her actions here make me all the more suspicious of her behavior.
So first I have to answer what kind of relationship Guy and Annie actually had and whether Seth even is Guy’s son or at least what he thinks on the subject. I’ve never really doubted that Guy at least thinks Seth could be his son, he’s not 100% sure (owing to my opinion that their relationship was likely mostly a few drunken half-remembered hookups and he can’t be sure she’s not also with other men in that time) but he’s willing to be like ‘fine I’ll send the kid to the abbey after it’s born.’
Which leaves us with the big concern, how the baby ended up in the woods. I can’t tell if the episode is meant to be implying that Guy had been out dumping the baby when he shows up at the beginning, but it certainly isn’t made clear even which direction he was coming from so I don’t feel like we have to assume that’s the case since it’s so hard to jell with other aspects of Guy’s character. So did he have someone else take the kid and they dumped it? It’s not like Guy knows or employs the most trustworthy of people. Did that people take the money and run or did something happen to them on the way (possibly falling into Locksley Canyon in one of its random appearances)? How long was the baby out in the woods anyway? (And how much brain damage did Robin do having it barely secured while riding on horseback?)
Does he want the kid, probably not; does he particularly care about the kid, probably not; but I don’t see why he wouldn’t be willing to send the kid to the abbey (if only the Locksley orphanage existed at this point; though by that logic if the Locksley canyon existed currently they could have dumped the baby down there). Annie says it isn’t cheap, and Guy at this point in his life (after Vasey’s had years to mold him and before Marian really starts to get under his skin) is almost certainly capable of killing a child/allowing it to die with good reason, but just existing and making his life a tiny bit more complicated (at the abbey it will be out of sight out of mind, just like Izzy) doesn’t seem like enough for his own child.
Maybe that’s why Guy doesn’t have many lines this episode. Anything he did say would come off like a terrible excuse of what he’s supposed to have done in the moment, but it also meant the writers didn’t commit to anything about his behavior or motivations about it. Which was convenient when they decided this wasn’t really the Guy they wanted for the rest of the show.
