PNW: The Great Escape

[purplecat]

Another excellent episode.

I think the episode benefitted from pulling away from the ensemble for a week and focussing instead on just Evan, Dylan and Leeds. Leeds, in particular, did very well even though I suspect Evan and Dylan got more actual screen time. I love the way the character shifts between bumbling and determined, and the way he obviously has a strong moral sense, albeit one that recognises certain expediencies and is prepared to own the consequences of his actions. It makes him a much more nuanced military figure, and semi-antagonist, than you often see.

I was also impressed by the way that even though Evan and Dylan's behaviour is both dangerous and foolish we actually believe, given the characters they have been given, that this is what they would do. I'm really much more impressed by the character work on this iteration of Primeval (and on the greater attention that is, once more, being paid to the way tranquilisers work). B. was impressed by the realisation of a terror bird walking on ice. We are, in general, impressed.

Obviously, just to be clear we weren't impressed by everything, Major Douglas and his military team were about as useless as a chocolate fireguard. Dylan took stupid risks, again, even after the terror bird had killed a human. Her characterisation, early on in the show, as a predator control expert was very good, but she's been gradually slipping towards Primeval's tendency to over-sentimentalise the creatures. However her decision to euthanize the bird at the end was well played and very credible.

But all in all I really liked this episode. I'm impressed by the arc-plotting work they've done leading from Angry Birds onwards, with Undone, Truth and The Great Escape as particular high points.


I have to say that Primeval: New World has turned out to be a much better show than I had expected. So, of course, it entirely figures that its cancellation was announced the other day. It's not a Firefly level tragedy, but given I thought Primeval's "cancellation" after series three was more or less a case of putting it out of its misery, and its second cancellation after series five was understandable, if a bit of shame, I'm really rather upset about this one.

Comments

[deinonychus-1.livejournal.com]

I did notice when I was doing the Abby meta just how many occasions they sacrificed character continuity to the needs of the plot. Not so much in the first couple of series, but certainly in series three I seem to remember there were some particular WTF moments that made no sense in light of previously well established character behaviour.

It's a shame, because way back in 2007 when series 1 first aired, I was drawn to the show by the promise of dinosaurs, but stayed with it on the strength of the characters who I rapidly became very attached to.

[purplecat]

I think the drop off in characterization is particularly obvious with Helen but all the characters to a greater or lesser extent suffered from it, which is a shame.

[purplecat]

Season 3 is a particular low point on lots of levels, but characterisation does particularly poorly. It got its act together again somewhat after that, but it was a slow improvement (I thought season 5 was better than season 4) and they got themselves trapped in some sillinesses (too many magical technological solutions, April) which really didn't help.

[deinonychus-1.livejournal.com]

I don't think the turnover of characters helped, because a lot of the time in series 3 you ended up with characters being shoved into roles that had previously been occupied by characters who got killed off or left, and there was a bit too much shuffling around of roles.

Abby in particular got messed around, because she ended up spending a lot of time in series 3 filling the roles that Stephen and/or Cutter used to fill, while being simultaneously pushed out of the action side of things by the arrival of Danny.

I'd go so far as to say that the whole team dynamics got cocked up in series 3, and I think the main reason behind that was the fact that they replaced a scientist team leader with an action man team leader. That substitution caused a lot of cocking about with the team roles of previously established characters like Connor and Abby. With Matt as leader they sort of went for the best of both worlds - a cerebral action man - and that put a bit of science/action balance back into the team.

That said, I do agree there was some general all-purpose silliness and out of character behaviour in 3 and 4 that made no sense at all, even give the need for a bit of role reshuffling.

[purplecat]

If they'd been able to properly get their brains around the idea of a woman being in charge, they wouldn't have had to dick around with the character roles nearly so much (just saying).