ladystonehugs replied to your post: ladystonehugs replied to your photo: holmes: *i am…

i twittersploded about a lot of similar stuff when i was watching the episode, because i was really worried they were going to do what the good wife seemed to do, which was - watch the wire, decide it’s good television, but??? sympathize with the cops and the white bureacrats (carcetti) and see them as very clear cut Good Guys vs the ‘interesting’ but still clearly bad Bad Guy criminals/economically disprivileged black characters so i was like PLEASANTLY SURPRISED!!! when bradshaw wasn’t, at least, portrayed as the scary bad evil guy in the episode - that the actual Bad Guys in this ep WERE cops (but the primary villain was a WOC, sigh) and that bradshaw was a victim of violence in the actual narrative and that andre really complicated any black and white view of the world because he was every bit the brother to marcus that marcus was to him, in terms of their love and loyalty, they just come at the brother thing, at what their priorities are, from different angles.

so yeah like!!! i was glad it wasn’t just a strict ‘SCARY BAD BARKSDALE VILLAINS good ingenious majority-white police’ dichotomy but…i did feel that same sort of letdown, that if you’re going to so obviously reference the wire (and they’ve had multiple castmembers from the wire and oz on their show at this point, all of them playing unrepentant criminals) that your examination of these issues needs to go much deeper and take things like structural isms into very close account, or like why are you even bothering?

tl;dr at least it’s not the good wife but YEAH i wish we got the story of the bradshaws in this show, not just the on-the-path-to-law-abiding-ness andres, and i wish we got the stories of the andres FROM andre, and i wish joan and reyes and marcus got to interact without holmes there and race and class were discussed as explicitly as misogyny gets to be by the narrative, rather than in subtle moments that never outright reproach the white characters or the police force as a structure or etc etc…and more than anything else that it’s not all the material marcus is going to get, that they don’t think his story is told now and relegate him to sidechar status.

yyyyyy! “at least it’s not as bad as the good wife” isn’t really a lot of praise, but: at least it’s not as bad as the good wife. :/ at least we don’t have liberal white characters smugly explaining how racism doesn’t exist! (apparently, my bitterness over tgw hasn’t lessened much. heh.)

and the thing is, elementary still could’ve had conflict between the brothers without it being about one being a cop and the other an ex-con. like what if andre was a professor or lawyer or baker or something and still had issues with marcus being a cop because he, andre, is opposed to the systematic racism of the nypd. or, you know, maybe andre has been arrested before, on bogus charges/because he’s black/maybe he’s involved in protests, and can’t understand why marcus is a cop, when they grew up in the same circumstances. i would much rather a wire-ish reference that way — examining structural ~isms — rather than just shallow mentions that are kind of cute and a quick moment of recognition glee, but not anything more that that.

ladystonehugs replied to your post: ladystonehugs replied to your photo: holmes: *i am…

oh also wanted to address like - yeah, if you do a the wire inspired ep, you want there to be black voices, but if that’s all the voice your single black regular GETS? it’s like a weird kind of narrative ghettoization where he can only have a “black” storyline or else he’s relegated to the sidelines, to being a helper character to the other white characters + joan (if he even talks to her) with no voice or story of his own. ahhh i hope they are actually thoughtful about this, it’s clear they know how to give for example greggson ample screentime even in the episodic nature of the show so i don’t see why they can’t do the same with marcus, or why they can’t have carrie and alfredo appear more regularly, or etc.

yeah, this, too! i think this is possibly my main issue with this episode — it’s less about the wire, specifically, and more that this might be the ONLY (or one of the few) episode(s) marcus gets — and that the writers chose this particular story for him is not giving me a lot of confidence. it hasn’t quite broken my trust in them, but at the same time, idk. i really do not want this show to become like tgw re race.

i want the writers to watch HLOTS, because it’s a little closer in terms of the procedural format to elementary than the wire is, and take notes about the characterizations of frank pembleton and meldrick lewis. HLOTS is a lot more of an ensemble show, but i really would not mind spending less time with the murderers or on fake-out scenes or white dude guest stars (regardless of their relationship to sherlock) if it meant marcus could get more to do.

“you always know it, watson. if you didn’t, then it wouldn’t be penance.”

“the thing that is different about me, empirically stating, is you” 

keels over , too pale. too pale to live .