This Bothers Me

[sariagray]

Somewhat.

Behind the cut. Because there are some spoilers. Not that anyone who reads this doesn't KNOW the spoilers, but...just in case....

In every instance I can think of where there is mass death on the show, I tend to glaze over the impact. Instead, I focus on the danger to the team. It's "Oh no, Owen!" or "Oh no, Tosh!" or "Oh no, Gwen!" or "Oh no, Ianto!" Hell, it's even often "Oh no, Jack!" despite knowing that he can't die.

But think about it (and I'm just using a couple of episodes as reference points). 

I'll start with End of Days, just because.

We've got this...creepy demon. It kills a whole bunch of people. They just...drop dead. Completely. And the whole while, I'm focusing on the team. Five people. Not the dozens crowding the streets. The mothers wives brothers sisters sons friends roommates cousins bosses whose lives are, really, just as important.

It's almost as if it isn't serious, as though the bodies were merely props used to symbolize the danger to these five people. 

I understand that we've followed Jack, Ianto, Gwen, Owen, and Tosh (and Rhys and Andy, too), so their safety would be what we focused on, their deaths the ones we'd mourn with greater urgency. But something about it all still feels off.

And really, wasn't Gwen supposed to bring that humanity? I never really cared for one of her little "pet" projects in human understanding. But Ianto silently tearing up at the end of From Out of the Rain makes me feel something. I know nothing about that boy. Nothing. And I care. More, even, then I did in Adrift.

I think that that's what Random Shoes was trying to do. To an extent, it did, because I really liked Eugene. But using Gwen as the vehicle might have been the wrong choice. And I cared for the woman in A Day in the Death, too. But it was all peripheral. And even that's not the point.

At the culmination of S2, I didn't really care that all of Cardiff had blown up. I didn't care about the casualties, the WHOLE FAMILIES who perished. Why? Because two people I cared about died. Yes, well. It was distracting from the human impact. Two people versus a whole city. That is how one feels when grieving, I know, but again...something seems strange about it the more I contemplate.

The woman with the pram in Sleeper may have been an alien. But her husband or wife/boyfriend or girlfriend, her child, her parents and siblings, didn't know that. All they know is that she is never coming home to them. That she's gone forever. She won't be making toast in the morning when her partner comes downstairs, she won't be singing lullabies to her child when s/he fusses. And that's irrevocably sad. They will mourn her for years.

Even CoE. Yes, Ianto dies. Yes, I have a vested interest in Ianto. Yes, I am devastated. But he isn't the only one. There is a building full of people dying. People with families, people with wants and desires and dreams and ambitions and hangups and foibles. The impact of that never reaches me. If done properly, they could have let Ianto live and worked in a way (with all of these people, all their humanness!) for me to be bawling even more than I did. And that would've been the much greater impact.

The body count in this show is so so so high. But bodies aren't props; the humanity doesn't come from Gwen, but from caring about all of these people who just cease to exist. I can't tell if that was done on purpose, a way to point out our own selfish proclivities or our jaded sensibilities, or was just a ham-fisted attempt at illustrating the danger of whatever Big Bad they were facing.

But Elizabeth Perkins had just gotten a new job and was about to call her mother to tell her. Gerald Kingsly was walking back from the jewelers, working out how he'd propose to his girlfriend after six years of dating (and he still wasn't sure he'd say yes). Harold from accounting  was bitching on the phone to Jessica about the new payroll system and thinking about what he was going to do for lunch. Netty Smith was screaming at her mother about how it was her life, god damn it, and she'd dye her hair whatever color she damn well pleased. John Jacobson III had been drinking a cup of coffee and wondering what exactly he was supposed to do with himself now that his wife left him for his best friend, his son tugging on his sleeve barely registering in the haze of depression that had overtaken him. 

And now they're all dead.

Who will tell their stories? I guess I have to. 

Thus, a new plot bunny was born.

Comments

[sariagray.livejournal.com]

I concur with your point on the actors. Even the characters I despised were well-acted.

And no feeding the plot bunnies. They're already getting fat!