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netgirl_y2kI have spent an outrageous amount of time this week trying to process my feelings on this last episode of Person of Interest. It's really thrown me, and I don't think I'll know exactly how I feel until I see the final three episodes.
I knew Root was going to die, that's the first thing.
I guessed it when the showrunners announced that not everyone was making it out of this season alive. I was sure of it when one of them answered an interview question about the final season and the recent Bury Your Gays controversy by saying "...some unfortunate tropes play themselves out." The final nail in the coffin was when the Root the immortal lesbian jokes started flying around tumblr.
There were posts on my dash claiming that of course both Root and Shaw would survive the series because the op trusted the showrunners and believed they valued the Root/Shaw fans too much; people were saying the same thing about The 100 before Lexa's death. I know tumblr logic can be a zero-sum game, but if you're not going to apply critical thinking skills, then at least try to remember something that happened not three months ago.
So I knew Root was going to die. But I thought it was going to be in the finale. I thought it was going to be in the context of 'rocks fall, everyone dies'. I was not prepared.
The second thing, of course, is whether Root is another yet another example of the Dead Lesbian Trope.
I will say that if it is, it's the most well-worked, narratively satisfying, emotionally affecting (in the genuinely moving sense, not the frustrating for fuck's sake sense) example of the trope.
I think in basically any other TV season Root's death would have passed without Bury Your Gays being mentioned, but this season...
In the interests of being fair, the thing I keep telling myself is that these shows were all written and in the can well before The 100 controversy happened. Person of Interest especially, as CBS kept pushing the premiere back. And while it sucks that everyone drank the same bad idea kool aid at the same time, and sucks more that it took something as egregious as Lexa's death to make people pay attention to what has been an ugly trope for twenty some years, it's if this is still happening next year that we should all collectively go: jfc, have you learned nothing!?
But people's mileage will vary as to how far they are willing or able to divorce any one show from the broader television landscape right now.
Narratively, I'm okay with Root's death. I'm inclined to believe that this is where her arc was always heading. I believe it's possible to draw a straight line between Root as the villain who wanted to free the Machine, to Root as the analogue interface, to Root as the literal Voice of God. And her death had been well foreshadowed; Root has always been the character articulating that they won't all survive the Samaritan threat. She had a line in an earlier season, "After the life I've lived a good end would be a privilege," and I do believe that by her own definition, going out saving Harold and in the belief that she would live forever by the side of her God was a good end.
I do hope that on some level at least that's true; that somewhere in the background of the Machine's code there's a constantly running simulation of Root and Shaw kneecapping bad guys, flirting, and living as close to happily ever after as they were ever likely to get.
I am willing to accept pretty much any interpretation of the Machine's new relationship to Root as valid; from the Machine has taken Root's voice to honour her memory, to simulations of Root are bound up in the Machine's code so much so that's she's taken on Root's personality, to Root is somehow the Machine now, shhh.
I'm even okay with Root's death being alone and off-screen, first because I have to believe that the Machine was talking to her the whole time, and second because the scene where the Machine speaks to Harold in Root's voice is among the most powerful the show has ever done.
I do have a couple of narrative niggles. The first is that as much as Root becoming the Voice of the Machine fits in with her larger arc, since mid-S4 her arc had changed from her as an acolyte of the Machine to the vengeful widow/search for Shaw arc, and it fit in much less well with those themes. I understand that the Root/Shaw relationship wasn't planned, that the writers saw the chemistry between the actresses and decided to run with it, and later decided to make their relationship explicit rather than keep it in the realm of subtext/queerbaiting, and I don't want to criticise them for that, because isn't that what we want? But it did kind of leave me with the feeling that this ending for Root had been fixed on fairly early on in Root's evolution as a character, and they'd stuck to it even as became less fitting. Not unlike the Harry Potter epilogue.
The other problem is structural. After Root's arc in late S4/S5 had revolved so tightly around her feelings for Shaw killing her off the week after they were reunited felt abrupt, to say the least. That, I feel, was a casualty of the shortened episode order. In a full length season I feel like it would have gone 5a: the search for Shaw, ultimately leading to her escape, 5b: the team reunited, gradual exposition about Root's transhumanist belief system, ultimately leading to her sacrifice and becoming the Voice of the Machine.
As a rule I prefer shorter TV seasons to longer, and its certainly possible to tell good stories in thirteen episodes; what's not possible is to tell a twenty-two episode story as well as you'd like in thirteen episodes. I remember Babylon 5 where they thought they were being cancelled and had to cram the entire Earth War arc into the back half of S4; of course after they were renewed they had the opposite problem of a full length season 5 where they were scrambling around for any story worth the name.
And now I'm really worried about Sameen Shaw, who couldn't kill Root in over seven thousand simulations, and who still has a tenuous relationship with reality. I know the season was truncated, and they had to work round when Sarah Shahi was coming back from maternity leave, but not having an episode or two with them together was just bad pacing.
I think if I'm going to be okay with Root's death other characters have to die (and I do think they will) before the end, otherwise you have a show that ran for five seasons and only killed the black lady and the lesbian.
tl;dr? Here are my feelings in the form of fic about the low-key, underrated friendship between Sameen Shaw and Lionel Fusco; also an AI with multiple personalities: You Are Part Of A Machine (you are not a human being)
I knew Root was going to die, that's the first thing.
I guessed it when the showrunners announced that not everyone was making it out of this season alive. I was sure of it when one of them answered an interview question about the final season and the recent Bury Your Gays controversy by saying "...some unfortunate tropes play themselves out." The final nail in the coffin was when the Root the immortal lesbian jokes started flying around tumblr.
There were posts on my dash claiming that of course both Root and Shaw would survive the series because the op trusted the showrunners and believed they valued the Root/Shaw fans too much; people were saying the same thing about The 100 before Lexa's death. I know tumblr logic can be a zero-sum game, but if you're not going to apply critical thinking skills, then at least try to remember something that happened not three months ago.
So I knew Root was going to die. But I thought it was going to be in the finale. I thought it was going to be in the context of 'rocks fall, everyone dies'. I was not prepared.
The second thing, of course, is whether Root is another yet another example of the Dead Lesbian Trope.
I will say that if it is, it's the most well-worked, narratively satisfying, emotionally affecting (in the genuinely moving sense, not the frustrating for fuck's sake sense) example of the trope.
I think in basically any other TV season Root's death would have passed without Bury Your Gays being mentioned, but this season...
In the interests of being fair, the thing I keep telling myself is that these shows were all written and in the can well before The 100 controversy happened. Person of Interest especially, as CBS kept pushing the premiere back. And while it sucks that everyone drank the same bad idea kool aid at the same time, and sucks more that it took something as egregious as Lexa's death to make people pay attention to what has been an ugly trope for twenty some years, it's if this is still happening next year that we should all collectively go: jfc, have you learned nothing!?
But people's mileage will vary as to how far they are willing or able to divorce any one show from the broader television landscape right now.
Narratively, I'm okay with Root's death. I'm inclined to believe that this is where her arc was always heading. I believe it's possible to draw a straight line between Root as the villain who wanted to free the Machine, to Root as the analogue interface, to Root as the literal Voice of God. And her death had been well foreshadowed; Root has always been the character articulating that they won't all survive the Samaritan threat. She had a line in an earlier season, "After the life I've lived a good end would be a privilege," and I do believe that by her own definition, going out saving Harold and in the belief that she would live forever by the side of her God was a good end.
I do hope that on some level at least that's true; that somewhere in the background of the Machine's code there's a constantly running simulation of Root and Shaw kneecapping bad guys, flirting, and living as close to happily ever after as they were ever likely to get.
I am willing to accept pretty much any interpretation of the Machine's new relationship to Root as valid; from the Machine has taken Root's voice to honour her memory, to simulations of Root are bound up in the Machine's code so much so that's she's taken on Root's personality, to Root is somehow the Machine now, shhh.
I'm even okay with Root's death being alone and off-screen, first because I have to believe that the Machine was talking to her the whole time, and second because the scene where the Machine speaks to Harold in Root's voice is among the most powerful the show has ever done.
I do have a couple of narrative niggles. The first is that as much as Root becoming the Voice of the Machine fits in with her larger arc, since mid-S4 her arc had changed from her as an acolyte of the Machine to the vengeful widow/search for Shaw arc, and it fit in much less well with those themes. I understand that the Root/Shaw relationship wasn't planned, that the writers saw the chemistry between the actresses and decided to run with it, and later decided to make their relationship explicit rather than keep it in the realm of subtext/queerbaiting, and I don't want to criticise them for that, because isn't that what we want? But it did kind of leave me with the feeling that this ending for Root had been fixed on fairly early on in Root's evolution as a character, and they'd stuck to it even as became less fitting. Not unlike the Harry Potter epilogue.
The other problem is structural. After Root's arc in late S4/S5 had revolved so tightly around her feelings for Shaw killing her off the week after they were reunited felt abrupt, to say the least. That, I feel, was a casualty of the shortened episode order. In a full length season I feel like it would have gone 5a: the search for Shaw, ultimately leading to her escape, 5b: the team reunited, gradual exposition about Root's transhumanist belief system, ultimately leading to her sacrifice and becoming the Voice of the Machine.
As a rule I prefer shorter TV seasons to longer, and its certainly possible to tell good stories in thirteen episodes; what's not possible is to tell a twenty-two episode story as well as you'd like in thirteen episodes. I remember Babylon 5 where they thought they were being cancelled and had to cram the entire Earth War arc into the back half of S4; of course after they were renewed they had the opposite problem of a full length season 5 where they were scrambling around for any story worth the name.
And now I'm really worried about Sameen Shaw, who couldn't kill Root in over seven thousand simulations, and who still has a tenuous relationship with reality. I know the season was truncated, and they had to work round when Sarah Shahi was coming back from maternity leave, but not having an episode or two with them together was just bad pacing.
I think if I'm going to be okay with Root's death other characters have to die (and I do think they will) before the end, otherwise you have a show that ran for five seasons and only killed the black lady and the lesbian.
tl;dr? Here are my feelings in the form of fic about the low-key, underrated friendship between Sameen Shaw and Lionel Fusco; also an AI with multiple personalities: You Are Part Of A Machine (you are not a human being)
no subject
Date: 2016-06-05 01:30 am (UTC)I just - I think I'd invested a lot of thought into how Root was going to help Shaw recover and see a little bit of what their relationship would be like as a couple. That's the thing that I'm bitter about - I wish this didn't feel so much like the whole 'one night of happiness, then the bullet' situation.
I agree that the scene with Harold on the phone was incredible - it's one of the few things that makes me want to watch the rest of the series. Good narrative decision, that one. So good and gut-punching and amazing. If it had been after we'd had a little anchoring with Root and Shaw as a couple, I'd be feeling a lot less bitter, I think.
Now I've swung back to 100% cynical, and am sure that Harold and John are going to be the only survivors. And Bear. At least they've promised Bear will be okay.
no subject
Date: 2016-06-05 01:44 pm (UTC)And with the year long hiatus we'd all had a long time to get lost in our thoughts about Shaw's recovery, and with S5 leaning into that and her relationship with Root so heavily...
The more I think about it the more my issue is one of pacing; it was too soon.
My money had always been on Fusco and Shaw as the survivors. Fusco because of his son, and because the Machine has already set up a way out for them; Shaw because actually killing her might be a bit much on top of the fake out death and months of torture. But I've revised that to thinking Shaw will die too.
It's the 'too soon' issue again. With the show making Root Shaw's safe space and reason for surviving/escaping Samaritan... if we'd only had a couple more episodes to see her getting better and reconnecting with the rest of the team, then maybe? But now I think she'll die with Root's voice in her ear.
I had been pretty sure at least one of Finch and Reese was going to die, and that was why I was kind of okay with Root dying, but I swear to God, if they both survive and Shaw doesn't I will never love or trust anything again.
no subject
Date: 2016-06-05 01:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-06-05 02:09 pm (UTC)Yeah, I agree that the Machine probably has taken Root's voice in her memory, but for my own sake I'm choosing to believe that some part of Root is in there, somehow. I do wish we could have gotten more exploration of what Root's beliefs really were, maybe in a quiet scene in the subway, rather than in the middle of a car chase.
Although, really, for the next little while at least I think showrunners should think of killing their lesbian characters as being like killing the dog. Like, sure you could do it, but it's only going to upset people needlessly and get everyone really mad at you.
no subject
Date: 2016-06-05 09:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-06-05 11:33 pm (UTC)I did hear that the script for the final episode has leaked, now that I'm avoiding like the plague.
no subject
Date: 2016-06-05 09:36 pm (UTC)I think at this point I am expecting Samaritan to win.
no subject
Date: 2016-06-05 11:45 pm (UTC)I don't know about Samaritan winning, but I do think that 'rocks fall, everyone dies' might be the best of all possible endings.