it's a little funny to me that people on here who haven't watched house md and have only heard about it through the grapevine seem to think that the asexuality episode is the only time that the show egregiously erred about a sensitive topic most people at the time knew nothing about. like i swear to god on EVERY post on here about the show being hashtag problematic there's ALWAYS someone in the comments going "and it was bad about asexuality which makes it worse!" and yes the show was bad about asexuality (i am ace. i know) and yes that happened at a time when asexuality was essentially unknown to almost everyone in america, but citing that as though it's like.... a singular event that only happened to one marginalized group who happened to be Particularly hated is like... very very Very much ignoring how frequent and systematic these writing choices were.
in curating a list of episodes to skip i'm finding archived contemporary articles written the DAY after episodes came out from various relevant organizations saying "hey!! hey!! this is the first time most of the american public has ever encountered this issue and you were fucking cruel and evil about it!!" about topics including but not limited to: asexuality, intersexism (TWICE), homophobia, Deaf culture, autism, schizophrenia, psychosis, low empathy, AIDS, and racial medical disparities. this is not the end of the list it's just the ones i can remember rn. the writers of the show did not ONLY think that asexuality doesn't exist. the writers of the show were afflicted with south-park-itis wherein every time they heard about literally any marginalized group having feelings or opinions different from the mainstream, they went, "wow, i don't like that! what's the best way to mock and belittle them as thoroughly as possible so that everyone knows that we're very very smart and know everything and these nasty people are very very stupid and deserve to be othered??"
the show doesn't Just suck about asexuality. it sucks about everything. and it's not because it's a cute tongue-in-cheek "ooo we hate everyone equally 🤗" thing. it's because the writers were actively vitriolic and cruel and inhumane about every single person they didn't care to understand. it's bad. the ace episode is not an outlier, it's par for the course for the entire series.
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just finished episode 3 here are my thoughts
also i wrote this first part at the end of my review, but I'm gonna move it here to the top because it got a bit long and I feel like it's more important to state than my review
overall, i feel like the issues i have with the show are more of a me issue. i feel like I (and a lot of us book fans honestly) were hyping up the show to be one-to-one with the book when it's been said by rick and a lot of people working on the show that it was more of a new rendition rather than an exact book-to-screen adaptation
i know that when i watched the first two episodes with my friends, they didn't see any of those issues because they hadn't read the books at all, or at least not in a long time
one example, the issue everyone has with gabe's characterization is one my friend didn't pick up on, she recognized from the start that gabe was abusive and said something like "I'm scared what he'll do to sally if she doesn't get that car back to him"
those of us who live and breathe the books recognize that he's "not as abusive" or that it's a different kind of abuse in the books, so the characterization threw us all off in a way that it didn't for people who haven't read the books
so going forward, i'm probably going to keep that more in mind with the series and reviewing it. i think from a plot standpoint, it still manages to stay true to the book in the ways that really matter, and even emphasizes a lot of the key themes of the book more clearly, while still being extremely different, and I honestly think that's pretty cool
with that being said, bullet point review under the cut (reminder I wrote this before writing the above section and don't plan on changing it)
to begin with, I'm gonna be honest, I feel like they're changing a lot more than I would prefer with the plot. I'm still enjoying the series a bunch, but the differences are very striking to me
now going in chronological order with the episode, percy's reaction to the oracle was pretty funny
the whole thing of gabe being the one to tell him the prophecy looked stupid, but I feel like there was no way to translate it from the book without it looking stupid. i feel like when he's told the prophecy in the book, the creepy description is what makes it feel serious and the weight of the prophecy makes you forget how it's being told, and I don't really think that translates very well to film
also in the book the words are very clearly not words that gabe would say, but I feel like the way the lines were delivered in the episode was a bit off, like it just sounded like gabe with nothing creepy about it
percy choosing annabeth instead of annabeth pretty much forcing herself into the quest is an interesting choice that I'm not sure if I like or hate yet
it feels like they're turning percy and annabeth more into enemies-to-lovers than it actually is in the books
I love grover so fuckin much, grover's never been one of my favorite characters, but disney series-wise, he's definitely my favorite so far
i don't know why, but the little pool in the center of the poseidon cabin is my favorite thing ever, it just feels right
percy and luke's talk in his cabin is just <3
also the way luke went "it's a gift...from my dad" i just felt the WEIGHT of that, everything that it meant
also looking back on that, i love how both annabeth's hat and luke's shoes show the different ways they react to a gift from their parents. the hat is annabeth's prized possession that she doesn't want to give up, while the first time we see luke's shoes he gives them away and clearly doesn't appreciate them as a gift
i loved it since we saw it in the trailer, but thalia's tree is so fuckin cool, i love that it straight up just looks like a person standing guard
also the way they're pronouncing thalia's name is giving me life, my brother made fun of me for pronouncing it that way as a kid and i started calling her talia but to know 10 year old me was RIGHT, incredible
grover's little song had me dying, and percy using that song later at aunty em's was hilarious
ANNABETH IN THE GAS STATION, she was so adorable, that scene owns my heart now. her just grabbing every flavor of that candy was so damn precious
I'm sad we didn't get to see the bus blown up, they could've made it such a funny scene. have the trio run to the woods like "wow I'm glad we got out of there alive" then they look over at the bus and it just explodes. that could've been peak comedy there
the whole talk between alecto and Annabeth was interesting, it does make sense for them to have some sort of history considering what happened with thalia, so i think that's a good change, makes things more interesting
the way they got to aunty em's kind of annoyed me, i feel like they could have easily shown a passage of time and had them get there in the same way as the books. idk, i really liked how they ended up there in the books because they were just hungry kids that wanted burgers
also alecto being there felt a bit weird to me
when i heard they were taking a more sympathetic approach to medusa, i honestly got really nervous for how that would turn out, but i think they handled it as well as they could have. i feel like they said it in a way where the story could have gone either way; one way where medusa was poseidon's girlfriend, and another way where she was tricked and raped by him
she also goes on to both call him a monster and say that they loved each other, so again, i feel like it could still go either way with those lines, though it probably leans more towards the girlfriend perspective (even though I'm pretty sure that's the less myth-accurate perspective, but when has pjo been myth-accurate)
the way they killed medusa TERRIFIED ME, like annabeth my girl, you realize how badly that could have turned out right, having an invisible medusa
also how did that help percy in the slightest, he was still attacking something he couldn't look at so...how did that help
I'm hoping alecto being petrified isn't permanent, hades had better bring her back, i liked alecto. also isn't she important to some part of the plot in a later book? she's the only fury i remember the name of so she has to be important right?
their argument in the basement was an interesting change, i feel like to me it kind of just felt like conflict for conflict's sake. i don't think they felt super in-character in that section. their friendship dynamic feels a bit off through most of this episode honestly, but i think their dynamic's gonna be perfect going forward now that they've gotten past that conflict
percy saying the "i am impertinent" line perfectly. that whole exchange felt like it was ripped right out of the book, i loved that
i know everyone's been shitting on lin manuel miranda being in the show, but i still love the man, and that end scene was incredible
him in the elevator was so funny, and you just know he loved percy shipping medusa's head to olympus, he thought that shit was hilarious
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