Episode Discussion 3x09

[orockthro]

Well dudes, it's that time of the week again. o___o
Tonight's episode (3x09, The Crossing) might be a doozy, so let's hold onto our butts, keep our heads, and don't blink.
Spoilers beyond this point! And also feelings.

Comments

[hedda62]

The only thing that makes me feel better about it at all is knowing that Henson was in on it from the beginning and didn't want to stay on the show. It doesn't help to know that Carter had a completed arc, because I don't mind so much that she died (from a Watsonian perspective) as how they did it. I'm the first to stand up and cheer when a show kills a character off right, but I want to feel sad when it happens, or furious at the person who killed them - not just kind of blank and incredulous and focusing more on the betrayal of canon and tone than the actual death.

Maybe next week will make up for this somehow, but I'm doubting it. And even if so, it's still going to be hard to rewatch the episode that should have been pivotal and tremendously moving.

[felis]

Yeah, I agree with you. And I really do think that they conceived this mainly as a tragic hero story, bringing down her sworn enemy but paying with her life. And then they fucked it up at the end, because they wanted her death to have 'maximum impact' for the ongoing story, making it about Reese before that tragic hero story was concluded on her own terms. But for me, this last episode does not invalidate the fact that she was indeed a great character for two and a half seasons.

... thinking about it, unlike all our other 'dead but not' characters she probably had to die (first) because she was the good guy, unlike them, she didn't 'need' the second chance. The tragic hero in a show with essentially post-tragedy characters. Except that now she is missing as exactly the unique moral point in this universe.

[hedda62]

*nods vigorously* This, yes. Alas, there's a reason that tragic hero stories take really good writing.