#averwho

[nachosncheeze]

You know what? Fuck it. I'm gonna risk it.

BUT I'm gonna split my thoughts into two posts, so those who really don't want to hear about a certain character can skip this post and go to the next. So I present...

3x20 Thoughts (Averwho? Edition)

This episode is great.

I'll be honest, I was a bit nervous taking on Avery in gif form. I'm not even sure about posting some of these thoughts! There was a lot of her to cover in this episode, and I did, but I know she's not particularly popular. So thanks for indulging me.

WHY I wanted to do it: Part of it was that what I've found in the archives for the last few episodes has been almost entirely Jeller, and I wanted to do some gifs, but didn't want to repeat what others have done more skillfully than I can. But apart from that, I like what Avery has to offer from a story perspective. Not as a "making them parents" thing, because I'll be candid, I don't really see Jane as much of a natural mother-figure. I've just never found much personal satisfaction in a traditional domestic scenario involving her, as adorably fluffy as those scenarios might be. (No hate or judgment of those who dig it, though, to be clear. It's just not my thing.) Jane is maybe more of a big sister or overprotective aunt type in my head. That said, I also fully buy that whatever kids she oopsies into, she would (and does) love them completely, try her best as a mum, grow into it to some extent, and be fierce as fuck in the process. Think "the Jane we know and love (including all the season 1-style awkwardness), but on steroids." In that context, I love Avery at the very least as a means to explore that concept a little bit. I have a lot of little stories in my head that involve her, especially in season 4 and post-canon.

Back on track a little bit more to this episode: I also like that she serves as a really angsty counterpoint to the collapse of relations with Roman, and I wish I had more time to explore that in gif form. It gets me every time, the way Jane increases her bond with Avery as she dismantles her options with Roman, in inverse proportion, and often using very similar language. Take the moment at the end of this episode - "Thanks for not giving up on me."/"Never. We're family." - Avery was THERE IN THE ROOM when Jane said pretty much the opposite to Roman at the gala. Right then, Jane stated in pretty harsh terms that 'never' and 'family' are relative. Avery has her own reasons to be pissed at Roman - 6 months captive on a farm, anyone? - but I wonder if she has any thoughts about that.

The family interactions between Jeller and Avery run the gamut from panic and bewilderment (as they deal with a moody teenager at the start) to bittersweet and angsty (as Jane gets a glimpse into what she missed in Avery's childhood - and side note, bravo as always to Jaimie, because she plays those microexpressions around bittersweet wistfulness so well) to Avery finally accepting a hug, which is SUCH a contrast to the last time Jane talked her down, when she held Jane herself at gunpoint back in Berlin. Both times Avery was crying by the end, and both times Jane said "It's okay," but there's been growth. Anyway, this might be the one time we really get to see anything resembling a "day in the life of the Doe-Weller family" on screen, and I love that they managed to do it without losing the essence of Kurt and Jane themselves, because what would a day in the life of Jeller be without a foot chase, shootout, or hostage situation? Bonus in this case: we got all three. xD

[indelibleevidence]

We're in hiatus mode with the rewatch for the next couple of weeks or so, but I have 90 minutes until I can call to make an appointment before I sleep, so here we go with 3x05 - WTF Edition. Really hope this cut works, since we have a) plenty of negativity and b) spoilers right up to 5x11 in this post.

So. The Avery twist technically began in 3x04, but we don't get any fallout until this episode. So I'm going to go into an overview of why Avery bugs me before I get to 3x05 stuff.

Let me just start out by saying Kristina Reyes did really well with the material she had to work with. BUT I object to Avery's existence, because she's only around for one season (and thirty seconds at the end where she doesn't even interact with Jeller), and even though it would have been an angst gold mine to have Remi return and deal with her daughter being back, they didn't go there. And everything they had Avery tell the team about Crawford, they would have been easily able to get from other sources. She just plain didn't need to be there in season 3.

I once saw someone speculating that Jaimie and Kristina had a spat, based on Instagram unfollowing or something. That would make a lot of sense, that one of them refused to work with the other and ruined what the writers had originally planned for season 4 Remi and dying!Jane. But I digress.

Overall, I'm glad they wrote Avery out of the show, because when your ship has a kid, they become really boring. Even their shippy moments revolve around the kid. The things they were worrying about pre-kid are now background for kid-related angst, and there aren't that many ways to make that unique and interesting.

The writers kind of averted that with Kurt and Bethany in season 2-4, because Allie wasn't part of the team, she moved away, you only saw a few moments of 'going to be a dad' and they were buried under all the Sandstorm shenanigans, then Allie and Bethany only pop up a few times afterwards. And of course, every single character forgets about Avery's existence after 4x01. But season 3 parental!Jane and season 5 parental!Kurt were just annoying.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying real-life people shouldn't make their kids the most important thing in their lives. That's good parenting (assuming it's not overbearing). What I'm saying is that watching well-developed characters become the Worried/Protective Parent Trope is like replacing characters with cardboard cutouts, because there's not much to differentiate one worried parent TV character from another. They all just go 'MY BABY MY BABY' and it wastes screen time that could have gone towards fun team moments, or shippy playfulness, or whatever.

So yeah, from the moment I heard 'this says I have a daughter' I was already rolling my eyes. The amnesia angle makes it slightly more interesting, but the faked death plot point, when it was revealed, was just far-fetched. Roman's disregard for the only family he has who's not Jane is weird, given how family obsessed he is. A better revenge on Jane would have been what he said he'd do to get Avery to fake her death - getting her involved in his schemes against Crawford, getting her to break the law and become his permanent ally that way. No death-faking required, and a different plot point for getting Kurt to take tattoo help from him.

Basically, I just don't think there was a convincing enough reason for the whole Jane-has-a-kid storyline. Yes, conflict with Kurt and Roman being able to leverage Kurt were worthwhile plot points, but they could have found something else to make it about, that actually made sense.

But yeah. On to 3x05 discussion:

The absolute last acceptable moment for Kurt to put off telling Jane about Berlin was just before Jane got the envelope from Rossi. I mean, Kurt, you're a great FBI agent, you can't string these clues together and read the writing on the wall? Going into the seconds after Jane reads Rossi's message, he already knows that a) Roman knows about Berlin, b) Roman has promised there is more pain coming, c) Roman knows he can use Berlin to leverage Kurt's cooperation, to some as yet unknown end, and d) Jane now knows she has/had a child. When Jane said, 'I have a daughter', Kurt's response should have been, 'I know.'

The writers do have Jane say some stuff that's supposed to give Kurt an excuse for not telling her, like not wanting to disrupt the child's life, but all of that ignores the fact that they had at least twelve off-screen hours to process and discuss this information. I doubt Jane went 'I have a daughter - oh well, we'll ask Patterson about it in the morning, let's get some sleep.' She would have spent at least a couple of hours awake and stressing, and Kurt would have been talking her through it. So he totally would have had time to come clean before she started with her 'I can't have my sense of who I am ripped away again' stuff. Not cool, Kurt.

Jane reacts exactly as I would expect someone to act in her situation, except for one thing - the moment she says, 'How could I forget I had a child?' Like that's some sacred thing someone should never forget, even when they've had their entire memory wiped. She didn't say, 'How could I forget I was a terrorist?' or 'How could I forget I had a brother?' or 'How could I forget my parents were murdered?' So why should having a kid be any different? It just makes me think the implication was some 'sacred bond between mother and child' bullshit. You'd never get that if the amnesiac character was male.

Also it kinda sucks that they had Jane be processing the child reveal at the same time as the case was dealing with untested rape kits. Sure, Roman says the father was Remi's high school sweetheart, who was a 'nice enough guy', but the show seems to be nudging you into unacknowleged parallel territory up until that point. :/

Okay, I'm done. Sorry for the ramble. XD

[fenrisfawkes]

raffe prize for Averwho on Twitter

[indelibleevidence]

Okay, my fanfic might as well be good for something, so here's my take on the cheating through fic lines:

***

Allie:

“Jane had a screwed-up childhood that she barely remembers. She doesn’t remember all the mistakes she made while she was growing up, so she hasn’t learned from them. She was brought up by a woman who pitted her against her brother to compete for affection. She’s emotionally stunted as a result, and of course she’s still learning what unconditional love is. She never had it before she met you."

Allie shrugged and sipped her coffee, while Kurt processed her words. Before he could speak, she began again. “But sure, she needs to step up her game. No one’s denying that, not even Jane. And of course you should hold her accountable for her mistakes. I’ve already given her an earful for not treating you better. And if she screws up again, you bet I’ll be helping you find a divorce lawyer. You don’t deserve to be treated like dirt.”

***

Patterson:

Jane couldn’t help but get teary-eyed again. “You guys can hate me if you want.”

“Opposite, opposite,” Patterson said, putting a hand on her shoulder. Then she hesitated. “Well, not opposite, because I don’t love what you did, and if I ultimately have to pick a side, I’m gonna come down on Weller’s. But I can understand how isolated you felt. Until Roman came up with his little death-faking plan, it must have been hard for you to imagine you’d ever get home. I took a look into finding the bounty holder and I got nowhere. You must have felt pretty hopeless.”

***

Zapata:

“Come on, Jane. Of all the people you could have called in to go with you to save Avery, you picked the guy you cheated with? It’s like you wanted Weller to find out,” Tasha said. “I would have gone with you. So would Reade.”

***

Reade:

“Gotta say, I didn’t imagine her cheating, either. She takes more from you than she gives back, but infidelity is different from that. I’d guess the cheating was because she couldn’t come home. I’ve never seen her make eyes at other guys.”

***

Kurt:

“You take me for granted, Jane. You walked in here tonight thinking it was a foregone conclusion that I’d let you move back in here. You didn’t ask how I felt about it. You didn’t apologise for cheating. You assumed that I love you so blindly that I can’t live without you, that I’ll forgive any transgression you make and that you don’t even have to ask how I feel about it.”

***

Kurt:

“But you can’t compare not telling you about Avery to what you did. What happened in Berlin was an accident. But you? You stood in front of another man, and you made the decision to break your marriage vows. Sure, you took off your ring when you left, but you know me, Jane. You knew I could never accept that it was over without talking to you first.”

***

Jane:

“I’d been relying on no one but myself for almost a year when I met him. It was being part of a team again that drew me to him. Working alone has its advantages, but you don’t have anyone to back you up. The only opinion you have to go on is your own. And I was going a little crazy. I needed a friend. That’s all he was to me for most of that partnership. A friend who, in another life, could have been more.”

***

Jane:

“I know you’re hurting, and I accept that it was my fault, but there is no possibility that I would ever have cheated on you if I’d thought I could go home, Kurt. I’m not making excuses for what I did, but this wasn’t the self-control issue that other couples go through.”

***

Rich:

“Really, Jane? You have the most attractive, considerate, ass-kicking husband anyone could wish for. If he were single, and the least bit interested, I’d snap him up so fast, you’d only see a blur before the orgasmic moaning started.”

[indelibleevidence]

Okay. So.

As a lot of you guys know, season 3 is not my favourite season of Blindspot. In fact, as my Facebook memories reminded me the other day, I had resolved to stop watching after the season 3 finale had thrown Remi 'creepy villain smile' Briggs back into the mix, and only the fandom's enthusiastic speculation brought me round to the idea of Kurt taming a wild Remi. Which didn't happen, but I'm happy I did continue to watch the show, because I love Remi with my whole heart now.

But yeah. There are many things I love about season 3 - Rich, Stuart, Blake, Meg, Wizardville, Patterson's newfound confidence, the Hirst arc, Jeller's happy moments, Tasha and Patterson's bonding, Allie, Roman's struggle for the feeling of family that he's lost, the reason Roman is guiding Jane towards Crawford... But there are also a lot of things that I very much don't love, and those things are going to annoy me. And when I'm annoyed, I go 'aaaaaargh' all over my blog.

The thing is, in this teeny fandom, which has like ten people left in it, I don't want to fill the tag with negativity. So I'm going to use specific tags, so that those who don't want to see it can filter it all out:

wtf jane

wtf kurt

wtf repata

wtf zapata

averwho?

roman bond

fujk

The last one stands for 'fuck you, Jake Keaton', obviously. And 'Averwho?' is the show's attitude towards post-season-3 Avery, so that's how I refer to her. XD

But yes. I promise to put my negativity in separate posts with relevant tags, so that it's easily avoidable. For those who don't know how to filter tags out, it's in the settings menu, under 'account settings', then 'filtering'.