#more a ramble

[regionalatclancy]

what i find really weird about parents and family is that although your parents are not letting you date yet, they still ask if you’ve had any relationships???? and even if i did why would i just announce it to the whole family right then and there???? i don’t get it

[oneweekobsession]

Plots and themes: killing ghosts with love

I rewatched the lesbian episode of Upstairs Downstairs on Netflix the other day, and in watching it I realized something I hadn't quite recognized before - that it was written by Heidi Thomas. Anyway, watching it on netflix, in between being slightly annoyed by them seeming to have cut the best bit (when Blanche walks her fingers across Portia's stomach when they're sat on the sofa - am I remembering that right?), I remembered one of the things that bugged me about the show: its heavyhandedness with themes and parallels. I remember writing about it at the time, after the lesbian episode, defending it from a kicking it was getting from some quarters:

I know the scripts are getting a bit of a hammering but I think the writers have worked quite hard to structure the last two episodes at least, setting up lots of parallel situations between characters. Last week it was all about children (Agnes not being able to have any more; Mrs Thack and her nephew; the Jewish refugees etc) and this week about female solidarity and friendship (the Girl's Friendly Society; Beryl standing up for Eunice; Agnes being there for Blanche, and turning out to be nice to the maids; all that torchlit exercise silliness; Blanche and Portia etc). And, deliberately or not, there's a clear parallel between eps two and three: Mrs Thack and Blanche both finding - almost - a life outside the house, before realizing life out there's not all it's cracked up to be.

So the last two episodes, at least, have been put together quite intricately. But that doesn't stop it being damn predictable: I saw the death of the monkey, the fact that Mrs Thack's nephew and Portia would be wrong 'uns, and that nonsense with the biscuit tin coming a mile off.  I can't for the life of me see what the overarching narrative of the series is. Give or take the Hallam and Persie storyline, and maybe that of Beryl and Spargo, there's nothing driving it forward from episode to episode. And within each episode it jumps from scene to scene with such ridiculous pace, it's infuriating.

To sum up, Upstairs Downstairs became about themes, themes, themes instead of - or perhaps overriding - organic plot development. Thoughtfully, intricately constructed themes, but themes none-the-less. Cleverly done, up to a point, but sometimes at the expense of storyline.

Call the Midwife is a very different beast, of course - as a procedural, each episode has within itself a lot more scope for structure than did Upstairs Downstairs, and because of that, there's much less need for the whole series to have an overarching narrative that drives it from episode to episode. But in the last episode (4.7) certainly, and maybe in others, the themes themes themes preoccupation seems have resurfaced as a thing that's driving a lot of the storyline. This was particularly the case with one bit of the storyline that, when looked at simply from a narrative point of view, seemed pretty unnecessary, but when looked at from the thematic point of view, was utterly integral.

Ghosts. Ghosts being put to rest. Through love. On Halloween.

The storyline that's either utterly unnecessary or completely integral to the episode, depending on how you look, was that of the little girl who wants her mother to come back as a ghost, a desire which is put to rest (or the process of putting it to rest, or at least mitigating it is begun) when Sister Winifred and Sister Monica Joan get her father to tell her how much he loves her and how he watches over her.

So that storyline establishes the principle of ghosts being put to rest through love; and from there, we recognize that we've got variations on the same thing being repeated, on the same Halloween evening, with two* other regular characters.

Firstly, Fred and Violet: he's haunted by the thought of her dead husband and his sense that he can't compete with a ghost - until he realizes that he has to put those thoughts, that haunting, to one side if he wants the happy life he desires with Violet. He acknowledges his love for her, and they move forward.

And secondly, Patsy and Delia: at one level, Delia's declaration ('I sometimes feel as if we're ghosts') and Patsy's response ('we're not dead, and we won't live as we were') is just wonderfully poetic; at another, it seems to be a nod to Terry Castle's Apparitional Lesbian; but at a third, and most important in terms of the thematic resonance of the episode, it's another instance of ghosts or ghostly spectres being put to rest through the power of love.

All of which is, you know, clever. It's carefully constructed, it's showing the same kind of idea from multiple perspectives, it's tying a big thematic thing in with the time of the year, and all. Thoughtful. Clever. Resonant.

Up to a point.

The problem that I had with the clever themes of Upstairs Downstairs was that it felt to me that more thought was going into clever themes than into narrative - and that storyline was being packed upon storyline, to amplify or multiply the situations in which those themes were playing out.

I fear CTM might be in danger of something similar. Ghosts being put to rest through love with parents and children, and with the heterosexuals and with the homosexuals - what a nice thematic linkage between different storylines: and yet, was the storyline with the little kid entirely necessary? I've read a few people comment that in this episode (as in other episodes in this series) there was too much going on; the thing that people keep suggesting could have  been cut was the little kid. It totally could: it wasn't really tied to any other storyline, it wasn't particularly interesting, to be honest, particularly with everything else going on. But, because of its thematic resonance - because it connects with (in a slightly sledgehammer way, once you notice it's there) the Fred/Violet and Patsy/Delia storylines - it was a storyline given a massive amount of prominence at the end of the episode.

Sometimes, themes are good, thoughtful, clever, resonant. Sometimes, though, it should be the storyline, not the theme that dictates the balance of an episode.

And me, I think I'd rather fewer, well thought-through, expanded storylines, than lots that are thematically connected but only briefly sketched in.  

*There's possibly also another dimension to this with Tim and the photo of his mother - i.e. her appearance as a ghostly apparition of sorts - but I've not quite thought it through yet, and I'm not going to, because I've already spent too long thinking about this...