My issue was that the show really didn’t convince me of their love during those first three episodes anyway. Since it was all a bullshit fantasy, and I knew that as a viewer, it was just three episodes of slogging through TV sitcom nostalgia. The scene with them talking to each other on the bed after Pietro’s death in Ultron did more than any other scene in the MCU to show me their feelings for one another.
Weird. You guys are still complaining about the first few episodes, but looking back, I thought they were the best part of the show!
I’d rather watch those three episodes instead of the finale, that’s for sure.
Overall, my feelings on the show are really mixed. I liked seeing Wanda and Vision interact. I like Kathyrn Hahn, so that’s always a plus. Evan Peters as Pietro was a nice treat. (I don’t feel cheated or tricked by that casting at all.) I despise magic pregnancy/accelerated baby growth stories in almost all media because it’s a writer’s crutch to get away from the actual grit of having and raising a baby. Everything about Monica and SWORD was just clumsy and boring. I didn’t care for the first three episodes, and I thought the last episode was dreadfully dull.
It was nice to finally have some Marvel stuff to watch, but this isn’t high on my list of MCU stuff.
stusser
1571
Having watched the whole thing, they made the right choice in streaming one episode per week. Most episodes had great cliffhanger endings.
I am so in on the weekly release cadence. I love having something to look forward to watching together with the wife, and the chance to water-cooler it during the week. I very much want all the prestige TV to come out this way moving forward.
CraigM
1573
Yeah, I think some of the fun was looking at the things happening, and having a reason to look for little details. This would not have been the case if we simply got it all dumped at once and binged.
stusser
1574
I don’t agree, not all prestige shows, just those specifically designed in this manner, with an ongoing mystery and cliffhangers or “oh shit” moments ending each episode.
My enjoyment of the publishing schedule is not predicated on cliffhangers, though they can enhance the experience.
Biggest thing for the weekly schedule is that it keeps the series in the conversation for longer, instead of just showing up and going away the next day.
That’s definitely something to ponder. I would say my favorite TV show in the last couple of years is “The Great”, but it dropped on a single day on Hulu. Alas, even if it had dropped weekly, I doubt many at Qt3 would have watched it weekly and discussed it at length like we did with Wandavision.
Grumble grumble Sometimes I wish this was a board of history nerds instead of comic book nerds.
CraigM
1578
I am a history nerd, but never heard of this show, and haven’t subbed to Hulu.
Catherine the Great?
Yes! It’s so good, I could gush about it all day.
On the other hand, I’m sure someone looking for historical accuracy for the story of Catherine The Great would be unhappy at the inaccuracies. But maybe not, since they do it in the service of making it such an entertaining show.
The sitcom backdrop was a fantasy, but their relationship within that fantasy was real. If two people suddenly got whisked away to Oz, that wouldn’t make their relationship somehow meaningless.
The whole magic pregnancy/accelerated baby growth was used in the story precisely because it’s a sitcom trope! That’s the whole point of why they used it. It would be like complaining, “I don’t get why they filmed the first few episodes in black and white. Color film is really inexpensive these days.”
Someone pointed out that we all watched Stranger Things, but I can’t really recall a lot of the details (or even what happened on which season) because everything blurs together when you binge them really quickly.
Actually, their relationship wasn’t real. That Vision wasn’t real at all.
Nah. No thanks. Using a trope and winking isn’t clever to me at all, unless you do something with it that brings the audience in on the joke. The magic pregnancy and kids were played entirely straight within the show to the point that apparently the audience was supposed to feel something when the dream kids were nulled away at the end.
He was magically created by Wanda, so he was real to that extent. And her feeling towards him were real, which is what the opening episodes were there to establish.
The kids literally transformed in front of your eyes. The cake in the opening credits had candles on it that said “1 2 3 4 5”. Those were all things bringing the audience in on the joke. And I don’t see any contradiction between the kids magically growing up, and feeling something for them when they disappeared. But hey that’s just me.
Sure. So was every other thing Wanda created in her fantasy. The stork was real too - in that world.
Right. And if she had had feelings for the stork, then that would have been a way to show us that part of her character. But as written, those scenes were there to show us the depth of her feelings towards Vision, who she did have a relationship with.
I think you’re right that this was the intent. I think there’s maybe a degree to which the highly mannered sitcom style of their acting automatically calls into question the sincerity of any emotions between them, though. (Probably there were some true heartfelt moments in there between the sitcom hijinks? I need a rewatch to remember some of the details.)
Did vision have free will or was he ultimately programmed/controlled by his creator, even to the degree that he could disagree somewhat, but ultimately was hardwired to act in certain ways?
