Primeval 4.01

[purplecat]

It's generally acknowledged that the season opener in any genre series is a tough job. You need to introduce new characters, re-introduce the show in general and deliver enough short term whizz and bang to make viewers check back next week. Primeval, this time around, had also saddled itself with a number of loose plot threads that needed tying up.

Even so I was surprised by the extent to which nothing much was happening. At the halfway mark the ARC people were still in the ARC and Abby and Connor were still in the Creteceous. There had been a lot of scene setting but nothing that constituted even so much as a monster-of-the-week plot. We then crammed that into the final twenty minutes or so, complete with convenient disposal of Helen's anomaly opening device. Even making allowances for it's need to be the run-around season opener I thought this episode was uneven and patchy. That said I did prefer it to the season 3 opener which, structurally speaking, was more accomplished. Several people have suggested that the dialogue this season is much livelier than last which may account for it. Moreover the new characters at least have something that passes for a character (and Becker has found one someplace) where many of the characters in season three were just plot devices that spoke from time to time (of Danny, Becker and Sarah only Danny ultimately had any character to speak of though Sarah had a strong start which then fizzled).

Speaking of the new characters we have Matt Anderson, a man with a secret and who is quite buttoned down as a result. I've seen Ciaran McMenamin's acting written off as bland and uninteresting. I'll concede he's not adding much to the character beyond what's there on the page but he is competently conveying the fact that Matt wants to both like and trust his team but feels unable to open up to them which instantly makes him more interesting than Becker and Sarah were last season. I'd like to see how his character arc plays out before passing judgment. Jess, on the other hand, is all over the place. This isn't really Ruth Kearney's fault since she's asked to be ultra-competent one moment and an air-head the next and it would challenge a much better actress to pull of that kind of emotional switchback convincingly but the net result is an irritating character, one who appears to use bubbling girlishness to manipulate those around her when, I suspect, the powers that be were more interested in some kind of female version of Connor who mixed social incompetance with technical genius (with the added benefit of extremely short skirts). I'm being a little churlish here because I prefer the thought that has been put into Jess to the blanks that were season 3's Becker and Sarah but the net result, at the moment, is clumsy.


In summary I didn't think much of the story or pacing here, but I did find much to like in the episode and, in retrospect, it bodes far better for the rest of season 4, than the structurally more competent, but otherwise lacklustre introduction to season 3.

This entry was originally posted at http://purplecat.dreamwidth.org/30641.html.

Comments

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

I don't think I can argue with much of that, though I am less impressed by Matt than you appear to be...

[fredbassett]

There's not much I'd argue with her. I'm actually quite liking Matt, but Jess is definitely all over the bloody place.

[purplecat]

I like Matt, but I if he continues to be this, well, minimal in facial expression once he start opening up (assuming he starts opening up, but I'm not really anticipating more than the obvious character arc here) then I may revise my opinion...

[purplecat]

I wish I could put my finger on whether I think the problems with her arise from the acting, the writing, the direction or a mixture of all three. At the moment I'm mostly blaming the writing since the character summary: 19-year-old renowned field ops genius is totally bonkers even for Primeval.

I was re-reading my review of 3.01 where I praised the writers for their handling of female characters and realised that was an opinion I've largely dropped, partly because of the very short shrift the women got in season 3 but also because, if I'm being uncharitable, Jess's character looks like the ideas "bit of skirt", "girly" and "field operations genius" were mashed together in the most thoughtless and misogynistic way possible.

[fredbassett]

I think Primeval's one of those shows where you can't delve too much into the details like ages or everything starts to unravel. Jess's age and the way she's been scripted is definitely a thread best not tugged too hard at.

[purplecat]

The ages in the character profiles have always been bizarrely low. I didn't worry too much about Cutter, Helen and Stephen because a) it was just about possible for them all to be that young and b) you need to know academia to realise how odd the timescale was but with Jess you do have to wonder how they thought she would have a reputation as the best (even if she was) when she'd probably been working in the field less than a year.

But yes, I realise the age could be some publicity person having a brain-fart. The scripting in show, I'm less forgiving of.

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

Jess's skirt length in 4.03 made me feel sorry for the character as well as undermining her credibility. Such outfits in this context are curiously unsexy - Seven of Nine syndrome.

[purplecat]

I think there is a wardrobe problem as well. I recall reading a blog post somewhere commenting that Claudia was very realistically dressed in season 1, where Jenny was dressed as a caricature in season 2 and all the women (Claudia excepted) have, on occasion, been put in very odd and unflattering clothes. Jess's pinky orange get up is simply horrible but it's hard to blame the writers for that.

I can think of ways the character might work, girlishness and short skirts included, which would involve playing up the social inadequacy more and underlining perhaps, that she is good at solving problems but worries too much about what people think of her when not actively engaged by a problem but at the moment she just feels incoherent rather than interesting.

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

More characterization in general would benefit Primeval. I think this season has lost a sense of place, too - and that struck me before I remembered that it had been made in Dublin.

[reggietate.livejournal.com]

Jenny's S2 clothes sere kind of barmy, but they worked somehow, at least for me. So much so that while I liked her more sensible S3 look, I missed the old inappropriate-clothes version - and I'm still awaiting any explanation for why they decided to make her look more like Claudia at a time when the only character to whom this was significant was about to get pointlessly killed by his missus!

Jess doesn't make sense. As you point out, she's far too young for a start.

[purplecat]

I haven't got that sense, but so far I've only watched the first two episodes.

When Primeval pays attention to its characters it does some quite interesting and subtle things, but it does seem to have a tendency to lose interest in them very quickly and is bad at extending them beyond their original outline (there's a rumour that the Jenny character was dropped because there was nothing they could do with her once Cutter was gone). Interviews with the writers have also suggested an oddly "moralistic" aspect to some of the plotting and character work - e.g. a statement that Stephen had to die because he had had an affair with Helen.

[purplecat]

Maybe, but Sarah wore some terrible outfits and Abby's dress sense just got weirder and weirder. I've not been tracking who is in charge of wardrobe, and I'd be surprised if it was the same person in season 3 and season 4 but I'd say Primeval has a bad track record when it comes to dressing women.

[gabcd86.livejournal.com]

So that's why that bloody dockland thing was unrecognisable - it was in Dublin. Aha!

[purplecat]

It's also why we have no Sarah. Laila Rouass has a little girl and wasn't prepared to either uproot or leave her behind for the time required for shooting.

[reggietate.livejournal.com]

Plus they seemed to want to get rid of her character anyway, from what I've heard.

[gabcd86.livejournal.com]

Why on earth are they filming in Dublin, anyway? The fun of it was getting dinosaurs running around London.

I didn't notice the ARC actually having admitted to moving, though there's an Irish bloke now, so doesn't that just mean they'll have to squibble about to avoid people noticing this isn't London anymore? Or having "fake" London shots and stuff? Ugh.

[purplecat]

Financing deal. There is irish money involved now. But yes, I'm guessing they'll just pretend Dublin is London and then film the odd shot of actual London in an attempt to cover. Much like Who pretends Cardiff is London on a regular basis.

I'm not even going to comment on the anti-provincialism involved in losing interest if it doesn't feature London any more.

[purplecat]

Possibly, but if that was the case Laila is very foolish to be stating in interviews that it was childcare concerns that made her turn down the contract. It could easily make it harder for her to get jobs in future...

[fredbassett]

I think it's the tax break for filming in Ireland that make the difference.

There was never much that was recognisably London anyway, as most of it was filmed in Surrey.

[purplecat]

I was thinking as I typed that I wasn't 100% sure Irish money was the reason. I gather so much American TV gets filmed in Canada is for similar reasons.

I can't say London was every the attraction for me. I quite like the fanon (or at least some bits of fanon) assertion that the ARC is actually in the Midlands somewhere.

[fredbassett]

I've always plonked it near Reading, in my head, anyway. I've always avoided specifics in fic.

[gabcd86.livejournal.com]

It's not that, it's that the ARC *is* in London, and it will now lose the authenticity that came with it *being* in London. They can squibble, but still. And yeah, s'always more fun to see a street you've walked down get eaten. :P

I mean, was the same thing with Ugly Betty. It was in L.A but set in NYC, and looked weak. They brought it to NYC, and could do much more.

...the Irish still have money?

[purplecat]

According to Fred they have tax breaks, not money....

[reggietate.livejournal.com]

Same with the CMU - I always reckoned it would have to be somewhere in the middle of the country, since Abby seemed to work in a zoo fairly near the Forest of Dean, and Connor moved in with her mid-series. The Home Office place was clearly supposed to be in London, but the ARC could easily have been somewhere outside it.

IN S1 and 2 they at least suggested that they travelled to various parts of the country in pursuit of anomalies, without being too specific about it, though the majority could probably be assumed to be in Greater London. We had the beach, at least, in S2. By 3 they seemed to have no idea about locations at all, Having the anomalies so London-centric makes no sense, and is rather boring.

[reggietate.livejournal.com]

One of the things that did annoy me about Who when it started was the insistence on London being the only location in England, supposedly so kids could identify with it - never mind that there are kids who don't live in big cities. In the old show, the Doctor popped up all over the place, including the countryside, and even Scotland a couple of times!