Umm, people? A new episode aired this past Wednesday night.

[full-metal-ox.livejournal.com]

(a_blackpanther, I'm hazarding a guess that you may have had your hands full with Real Life; my apologies if I committed a faux pas in usurping your prerogative.)



This is the discussion post for Episode 8x07 - "The Fallen". Watch out for SPOILERS in the comments.

Comments

[hani.livejournal.com]

I just watched it online. I found it an entirely lackluster episode. It held no sense of urgency for me. I found the award ceremony a little too pat - wouldn't there be repercussions for the Sergeant taking credit/being ordered to? The unsub felt secondary and he was just a plot point so we could get this connection to Rossi's past all for the sake of his dedication.

I love his editor/agent, though!

[philstar22.livejournal.com]

I liked it specifically because it wasn't an urgent or particularly scary episode. It was an episode that was about emotion in a lot of ways, and I liked that.

Then again, I had just watched the similarly themed Bones episode right before I watched it. I was actually a bit teary at the awards ceremony. Something about people sacrificing for others and it being secret for a long time and them finally getting their just credit just does it for me. Love the theme, and it gets me every time.

[full-metal-ox.livejournal.com]

I liked the episode for containing a number of things that used to be CM signatures:

Victim agency, which has been all too rare of late (Donna Sullivan in "The God Complex" was a notable exception.) When Scott told Rossi to "leave him behind" at the mercy of the UNSUB, my thought was, "The Marines do not work that way; what's he up to?"--and was delighted when Rossi did indeed catch the oblique instruction to pull a Han Solo.

An aversion of the customary TV cop-show Sorting Algorithm of Mortality (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SortingAlgorithmOfMortality); I was desperately hoping for Sergeant Scott to make it to the closing credits partly because the tropes were so stacked against him: an older black guilt-ridden Vietnam veteran who mentored one of the heroes is, on most shows, "Like, Emily Brontë doomed. Like, Shakespeare doomed. Like, red-shirted ensign in Star Trek doomed."

A recognition that lives beside that of the Missing Middle-Class White Girl (whom I'm not condemning, and who no more deserved her fate than any of the victims) matter.

With the introduction of Blake, the relationship between the UNSUBS in "The Apprenticeship", Henry's hero-worship of Reid, and now this snapshot of a formative influence on Rossi--himself a mentor figure to his younger comrades--it looks as though mentorship is shaping up as one of Season 8's dominant themes. (Note also the parallels between the UNSUB and Hernandez the Third, as upholders of family tradition.)

(A detail, admittedly minor, that bugged me in the flashback sequences: coolie hats strike me as a cumbersome and conspicuous article of attire in which to be lurking in the jungle; a Vietnam veteran of my acquaintance tells me that none of the Viet Cong he fought wore them, and opines that they'd have done so only undercover as ordinary farmers.)

[blue-sunflowers.livejournal.com]

I thought it was okay, but will admit to zoning out during the flashbacks. PSAs are nice, but I'm really not into hour long ones.

[eiko82.livejournal.com]

The episode wasn't bad. I liked that we didn't see the unsub's face or knew his identity for the majority of the episode. I miss episodes like that. But man, such brutal ways to die. I felt so bad for the guy who was drowned in bleach. Ewww.

The flashbacks were okay-ish. Tho I did like the awards ceremony at the end.

[a_blackpanther]

Yep, I did. Hoo boy, did RL get in the way this week.

[full-metal-ox.livejournal.com]

I hope you're doing okay, and that the situation--whatever it may be--is under control, then.

[full-metal-ox.livejournal.com]

kosaginolegion raises another interesting point: not only is the UNSUB jumping to classist conclusions about where he'd contracted his tuberculosis, but a drug-resistant strain is unlikely to have arisen among homeless people with little to no access to health care.

[a_blackpanther]

I can handle it. It's just tiring and it's basically getting home and crashing in bed, so internet time = not much.

[kosaginolegion.livejournal.com]

Note, however, that KosagiNoLegion has not researched the subject and has no idea what the incidence of drug-resistant anything might be among the homeless.

Which is to say: "I am not a doctor. Nor THE Doctor, for that matter."

...I'm not even ginger, despite my icon.

[rainbow-goddess.livejournal.com]

I didn't find the episode all that interesting. I was also very confused by how Rossi and Scott were saved by the other soldier. I saw that he was there, and I could not figure out at all what exactly happened.

Other than that, I found the episode to mainly be a yawn.

[eiko82.livejournal.com]

I was also very confused by how Rossi and Scott were saved by the other soldier. I saw that he was there, and I could not figure out at all what exactly happened.

The way I understood it, he jumped on top of the mine, thus absorbing most of the blast with his body.

[full-metal-ox.livejournal.com]

I'll agree that the action was rather confusing*, but falling on an explosive is such a common war-movie trope (and real-life tactic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falling_on_a_grenade)) that I assumed that that was what happened.

*And perhaps intentionally so, given that we're dealing with a stressful situation in unfamiliar (to the viewpoint characters) surroundings, reported from multiple points of view. I recall a workshop from Confluence 2011 on writing battlefield scenes, and Tamora Pierce's haunting metaphor for the common soldier's perspective:

It's like the blind men and the elephant--only the elephant has gone musth and is trying to kill everything within reach.