#marta blathrs

[marta-bee]

I’m seeing a lot of people reacting to the new season of Good Omens.  (I’ve not seen it myself yet, so I don’t think there are spoilers here; if there are, they’re so truly vague my brain isn’t even processing them as such.) Anyway, quite a lot of you aren’t liking it in whole or in part, which is of course your right. 

Quite a lot of those reactions I’d connect to middle-act awkwardness. Which is also again your right to be unsatisfied by or unhappy with. But if it helps... middle acts are always hard to enjoy. Whether it’s Han Solo frozen in carbonite, Frodo being not quite dead but nearly as good as locked away in Cirith Ungor in Two Towers (trust me when I say the book ends in one heck of an unsatisfactory cliffhanger, much moreso than the movie), or just .... everything going on at the end of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, a good penultimate story almost always has to leave us frustrated as readers. That’s the point, isn’t it? To leave us wanting more, to feel like the story isn’t finished yet? 

But because of the realities of modern storytelling, we’re going to have to wait so much longer for the resolution and the pay-off. We’ll be waiting for years for this story to come to fruition, and damn it, our blorbos are suffering; or worse yet, they don’t even feel like our blorbos just now. Which was always going to suck no matter how you cut it. It’s the nature of modern storytelling that takes so long to prepare for the audience running up against human nature and wanting to have the story told now, damnit, and in a lot of ways it’s unavoidable. But it’s still always going to be rough.

Strangely, what I’m reminded of most right now is Ralph Bakshi’s 1978 Lord of the Rings animated monstrosity. I saw it a few years after the Jackson movies, after I’d read the book, and thank God for that, because on top of all the *cough* interesting directorial choices, they ended the story at Helm’s Deep. And to be clear it apparently was never advertised as a Part I. There’s actually a truly hilarious review (still available here, but with all the screenshots replaced by the ravages of time by placeholder images of how an old-timey family is happy because they eat lard, you’ll want to go to the Wayback Machine for the proper full effect.) A sample:

One of the side-effects of making Gandalf and Frodo go for a walk in the night air is this: when Gandalf discovers Sam eavesdropping, Sam isn't just outside the window (a sensible place for a gardener to be); he is, in fact, hiding behind a lone bush next to a stream where Gandalf and Frodo happen to walk. My question is this: what was Sam doing, in the middle of the night, hiding behind a bush, next to a stream? Or do I really want to know? Curiously, the filmmakers never get around to telling us who Sam is, or what his relationship is to Frodo. I guess they assume everyone already knows. But if you're not going to bother with telling the story, why bother with making the film?

Anywho, not to rob those of you feeling it of your grief and disappointm, but does it help to know it could have been worse? Or at least distract you to remember this hilarious ... thing ... exists?

I’m sure I’ll see the show in the upcoming weeks or months. Just now, I’ve just started a new job and am working quite hard in training for it, and am generally worn out. No room for anything new I’m afraid, and in any event I wanted to read the book and rewatch the first season first anyway. No use wasting a first viewing before I’m emotionally ready for it. I hope you all either enjoy it or at least enjoy not enjoying it together.